‘Will Ironman break pledge on women’s racing with World Championships format change?’

The men-only Ironman World Championship in Hawaii on Saturday ends a two-year cycle where triathlon’s biggest annual showcase has been separated by gender and nearly 8,000 miles.

How did we get here? Following a double-header in Kona 2022, Hawaiian authorities insisted that two days of racing wouldn’t be possible on the Big Island again. 

The decree was incompatible with Ironman’s pledge that the women should have a race day to themselves. 

It ultimately led to the men’s and women’s races alternating between Nice and Kona last year and this.

Changes are coming

But what happens next? The mayor of Nice made clear the city’s preference to embrace the original four-year plan.

This would see the two-year cycle repeat and the men race in France next year and the women return in 2026. 

Ironman chief executive Scott DeRue agreed the “commitment” is there. But he stopped short of saying that this agreement was locked in, suggesting changes are almost certainly afoot. 

But what are they and in what time frame? Ironman won’t be drawn at present. 

They say they’re listening to the community and researching whether the current model – including 1,200 women lining up in a women-only race on the French Riviera – is the best way to grow women’s participation. 

My takeaway is that they don’t believe it is. Yet don’t expect immediate action. 

Qualification is already underway for the 2025 Ironman World Championships (men returning to Nice, women to Kona). Therefore, it’s unlikely anything will change for 2025. 

Women and men reunited from 2026

This is because in the euphoric aftermath of 2022, Ironman pledged a two-day Kona in the future. Then it had to row back on that decision. 

It left men who’d qualified early for Kona 2023 facing either a deferral or instead having to race Nice. 

Ironman has been burnt once like this. So it will want neither the embarrassment nor logistical headache of having to change the World Championship venue again when qualification has started.

But I don’t see a women-to-Nice, men-to-Kona scenario in 2026. 

There were lots of positives for the 2024 race in Nice. 

But with the qualification process already slackened to try to get more entrants, 1,200 women on the start-line doesn’t stack up economically for Ironman. 

Unsustainably expensive logistics

Hosting World Championship events with the extra bells and whistles is expensive. 

Holding two a month apart with all the ancillary costs, workload and pressure on staff and sponsors that entails makes me believe the model will change.

In addition, of all the vocal dissent when Ironman landed on the original Kona-Nice decision, arguably the loudest complaint was not the change of location away from Hawaii, but the decision to split the men’s and women’s races by location. 

If that is to be rectified, and with Hawaii not budging on its stance of saying no to two days of racing, something has to give.

A Kona-Nice rotation

One compromise is that an exclusive World Championship takes place every other year on one day in Kona. 

Then a two-day Ironman World Championship – potentially running on successive weekends or Wednesday-Saturday, for example, to give a necessary break to re-energise – would take place at the same venue. 

Yes, this could start as Nice in 2026. 

This means the men and women race in the same place every year.

Broken promises

 But it also means the Hawaii race sees the women having to share the course – going against Ironman’s prior commitment. 

Given the draw of Kona, a race would still take place in the off-year in Hawaii, but it wouldn’t be a World Championship.

There is plenty of number crunching and head scratching for DeRue and his team to make before the decision is made.

But whatever happens, the only certainty is that everyone will have an opinion on it and not everyone will agree.