Ironman is family, or at least that is what the folks at Ironman would have you believe. Given that the Ironman is arguably one of the toughest one-day endurance events, I suppose Ironman can lay claim to being part of the Endurance Sports Family. Andrew Messick, Ironman.com CEO, was attempting to embrace this aerobic tribe just after the recent bombings at the finish of the Boston Marathon, when he sent out a latter to many thousands of Ironman triathletes, which is to say all in the Ironman Family, expressing the collective and heartfelt sorrow of endurance athletes worldwide for the cowardly and tragic actions of what now appear to be two sadly misguided brothers.
Mr. Messick is certainly entitled to "round the wagons" of the endurance community and remind his family of triathletes that the show must go on, but by calling attention to the tragedy of one race while not bringing nearly as much attention or focus to tragedies in his own races, Mr. Messick runs the risk of being labeled a hypocrite.
My family had the rare opportunity to travel to South Africa about a month ago. As much as I would have liked to, we were not there for Ironman South Africa 2013, which was occurring a bit more than a week later. Instead, we were there to visit a too small bit of this amazingly beautiful country, landing in PE and then driving on the "Garden Tour" to majestic Cape Town 800 km to the west. Being in PE, thoughts naturally went back to 2011 and IMSA on my 50th birthday. I had always wanted an actual copy of the 2012 IMSA official race magazine, which ran a feature article by editor Paul Ingpen on this weird guy who trained on a small compound in Saudi Arabia and qualified for Kona, and which mentions and quotes me (okay, the weird guy), and even has a photo of me/weird guy with the 2012 and subsequent 50-54 winner, in various other parts of the magazine. Thankfully, a bike shop in Cape Town had a few extra copies, and so we picked up the 2012 edition while also getting a copy of the hot-off-the-presses 2013 edition, to be given to the IMSA 2013 triathletes that coming week at race check-in. While the 2012 edition was fun to read for personal reasons, the 2013 edition said the most by not saying anything about something hugely important.
At the height of their summer, January 2013 is the half Ironman season in South Africa. Ironman calls these races 70.3 events (70.3 being exactly half of the 140.6 miles of a full ironman) and it turns out, tragically, that this year's South African edition of the race saw not one, but two, fatalities during the swim, both to men with no previous cardiac or respiratory conditions who were in their 20s/30s and therefore able to be my sons.
The Ironman corporation and the magazine had ten weeks to sort out a tactful, appropriate response to this tragedy to be placed in their flagship magazine, yet nothing was done. They were able to feature race results and an article about Abu Dhabi's triathlon in early March, more than a month later than 2013 IMSA 70.3, for one example, but no matter where you look in the magazine not a word is printed about how the 2013 IMSA 70.3 race unfolded - or the two deaths that will forever be associated with the race. Ironman has been down this road before.
In 2012 when they had the first (and last) edition of Ironman NYC, a not dissimilar drowning occurred in that race as well. Every news organization on the planet got the news out about the drowning, but Ironman was again mostly mum, only posting the perfunctory, expected, corporate-speak condolences on its website but certainly not getting the big word out to its "Family" of triathletes around the world like it did with the Boston disaster... when it was some other race organization's mess.
Ironman is very protective of its brand, and rightly so - it has created an idea that has become iconic; it would rather avoid being ironic. Yet Ironman has been growing its brand at a fast and, some would say, alarming pace. For increasing numbers of endurance athletes, to be a triathlete is synonymous with being an Ironman triathlete, never mind that the vast majority of triathlons in the world are not Ironman races, and many of those not by a long shot. No matter, Mr. Messick and company have done such a good job of promoting "Brand Ironman," which is to say the Ironman distance of the sport of triathlon, that its super-sized 3.8k/180k/42.2k swim/bike/run is now the sine qua non standard of virtually every triathlete, like it or not. Gone, or at least going, are the days when a person got involved with multi-sport races by doing a bunch of shorter triathlon races. Now, Ironman is the standard by which anything tri-athletic is measured, and Ironman, the corporation, has dealt with this rapidly growing mass of wanabes by creating new Ironman brand races as well as growing the races it already has to overflow.
I'm not a great swimmer and never will be. However, I've done six Ironman races (PB of 54 minutes in Kona), dozens of other triathlons, a number of long swim races, and spent multiple summers life-guarding, allowing for a healthy respect for the sport. Bike crashes are never fun, and running can make the body feel like it's hit a wall, but of the triad there is nothing remotely more dangerous than swimming. We are land animals, after all. Some of us even sink with full lungs!
Ironman promotes and sells its product very effectively, but my strong feeling is that it is not doing enough to make sure that those who sign up for its races are at least reasonably qualified to safely complete the swim leg under race conditions. In addition, Ironman can and should do more to keep its swim legs safe. The recent South African 70.3 had choppy conditions, fairly warm water (26 or so Celsius), a delay to the start on the beach, a run into the water, no or limited opportunities for a swim warm-up just prior to the race, a record number of race entries, and athletes in wetsuits. Taken one at a time each of these could be considered a potential danger; taken as a composite, and experienced by those lacking just that, they could be lethal - and were for two.
Ironman can't be blamed for not clearly listing the possible and plentiful dangers in its long races - like all events of this nature, it has an extensive waiver for athletes to sign, and the two who died certainly signed theirs. However, there has been such meteoric growth in the sport that it's unavoidably true that along with this increase in numbers has been a concomitant increase in numbers of folks with little or no relevant swim training that would adequately prepare for myriad conditions race day. Many athletes new to triathlon are skipping the shorter triathlons and moving directly into the longer races for their tri-baptisms. While some of them are undoubtedly strong swimmers and have no problem with this transition to long-course triathlons, many are less strong, with a few even perhaps quite weak. It is this latter group, inexperienced and under-prepared yet gushing with Ironmania, that would have the most to lose on race day.
Spec-Savers had been the main sponsor of Ironman South Africa for a decade. Not long after the 70.3 debacle, Spe-Savers decided not to extend its relationship with the Ironman brand in RSA. Only weeks after the 2012 NYC Ironman triathletes learned that a 2013 edition of the race had been cancelled. The 2012 race had sold out in minutes, and at $1000 per athlete, making it possibly the potentially most lucrative of Ironman's burgeoning quiver of races. Coincidence?
Both races suggest that Ironman may have a bit of a problem on its hands - how to grow a product that may be potentially unsafe to some of its would-be consumers? Any solution would be a complicated one, to be sure, but Ironman's best bet is honesty and full disclosure, and on these counts my sense is that it's coming up short - in a long race.
Mr. Messick is certainly entitled to "round the wagons" of the endurance community and remind his family of triathletes that the show must go on, but by calling attention to the tragedy of one race while not bringing nearly as much attention or focus to tragedies in his own races, Mr. Messick runs the risk of being labeled a hypocrite.
My family had the rare opportunity to travel to South Africa about a month ago. As much as I would have liked to, we were not there for Ironman South Africa 2013, which was occurring a bit more than a week later. Instead, we were there to visit a too small bit of this amazingly beautiful country, landing in PE and then driving on the "Garden Tour" to majestic Cape Town 800 km to the west. Being in PE, thoughts naturally went back to 2011 and IMSA on my 50th birthday. I had always wanted an actual copy of the 2012 IMSA official race magazine, which ran a feature article by editor Paul Ingpen on this weird guy who trained on a small compound in Saudi Arabia and qualified for Kona, and which mentions and quotes me (okay, the weird guy), and even has a photo of me/weird guy with the 2012 and subsequent 50-54 winner, in various other parts of the magazine. Thankfully, a bike shop in Cape Town had a few extra copies, and so we picked up the 2012 edition while also getting a copy of the hot-off-the-presses 2013 edition, to be given to the IMSA 2013 triathletes that coming week at race check-in. While the 2012 edition was fun to read for personal reasons, the 2013 edition said the most by not saying anything about something hugely important.
At the height of their summer, January 2013 is the half Ironman season in South Africa. Ironman calls these races 70.3 events (70.3 being exactly half of the 140.6 miles of a full ironman) and it turns out, tragically, that this year's South African edition of the race saw not one, but two, fatalities during the swim, both to men with no previous cardiac or respiratory conditions who were in their 20s/30s and therefore able to be my sons.
The Ironman corporation and the magazine had ten weeks to sort out a tactful, appropriate response to this tragedy to be placed in their flagship magazine, yet nothing was done. They were able to feature race results and an article about Abu Dhabi's triathlon in early March, more than a month later than 2013 IMSA 70.3, for one example, but no matter where you look in the magazine not a word is printed about how the 2013 IMSA 70.3 race unfolded - or the two deaths that will forever be associated with the race. Ironman has been down this road before.
In 2012 when they had the first (and last) edition of Ironman NYC, a not dissimilar drowning occurred in that race as well. Every news organization on the planet got the news out about the drowning, but Ironman was again mostly mum, only posting the perfunctory, expected, corporate-speak condolences on its website but certainly not getting the big word out to its "Family" of triathletes around the world like it did with the Boston disaster... when it was some other race organization's mess.
Ironman is very protective of its brand, and rightly so - it has created an idea that has become iconic; it would rather avoid being ironic. Yet Ironman has been growing its brand at a fast and, some would say, alarming pace. For increasing numbers of endurance athletes, to be a triathlete is synonymous with being an Ironman triathlete, never mind that the vast majority of triathlons in the world are not Ironman races, and many of those not by a long shot. No matter, Mr. Messick and company have done such a good job of promoting "Brand Ironman," which is to say the Ironman distance of the sport of triathlon, that its super-sized 3.8k/180k/42.2k swim/bike/run is now the sine qua non standard of virtually every triathlete, like it or not. Gone, or at least going, are the days when a person got involved with multi-sport races by doing a bunch of shorter triathlon races. Now, Ironman is the standard by which anything tri-athletic is measured, and Ironman, the corporation, has dealt with this rapidly growing mass of wanabes by creating new Ironman brand races as well as growing the races it already has to overflow.
I'm not a great swimmer and never will be. However, I've done six Ironman races (PB of 54 minutes in Kona), dozens of other triathlons, a number of long swim races, and spent multiple summers life-guarding, allowing for a healthy respect for the sport. Bike crashes are never fun, and running can make the body feel like it's hit a wall, but of the triad there is nothing remotely more dangerous than swimming. We are land animals, after all. Some of us even sink with full lungs!
Ironman promotes and sells its product very effectively, but my strong feeling is that it is not doing enough to make sure that those who sign up for its races are at least reasonably qualified to safely complete the swim leg under race conditions. In addition, Ironman can and should do more to keep its swim legs safe. The recent South African 70.3 had choppy conditions, fairly warm water (26 or so Celsius), a delay to the start on the beach, a run into the water, no or limited opportunities for a swim warm-up just prior to the race, a record number of race entries, and athletes in wetsuits. Taken one at a time each of these could be considered a potential danger; taken as a composite, and experienced by those lacking just that, they could be lethal - and were for two.
Ironman can't be blamed for not clearly listing the possible and plentiful dangers in its long races - like all events of this nature, it has an extensive waiver for athletes to sign, and the two who died certainly signed theirs. However, there has been such meteoric growth in the sport that it's unavoidably true that along with this increase in numbers has been a concomitant increase in numbers of folks with little or no relevant swim training that would adequately prepare for myriad conditions race day. Many athletes new to triathlon are skipping the shorter triathlons and moving directly into the longer races for their tri-baptisms. While some of them are undoubtedly strong swimmers and have no problem with this transition to long-course triathlons, many are less strong, with a few even perhaps quite weak. It is this latter group, inexperienced and under-prepared yet gushing with Ironmania, that would have the most to lose on race day.
Spec-Savers had been the main sponsor of Ironman South Africa for a decade. Not long after the 70.3 debacle, Spe-Savers decided not to extend its relationship with the Ironman brand in RSA. Only weeks after the 2012 NYC Ironman triathletes learned that a 2013 edition of the race had been cancelled. The 2012 race had sold out in minutes, and at $1000 per athlete, making it possibly the potentially most lucrative of Ironman's burgeoning quiver of races. Coincidence?
Both races suggest that Ironman may have a bit of a problem on its hands - how to grow a product that may be potentially unsafe to some of its would-be consumers? Any solution would be a complicated one, to be sure, but Ironman's best bet is honesty and full disclosure, and on these counts my sense is that it's coming up short - in a long race.
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