You have a limited shelf life running a mid size organisation in a perpetual existential crisis, taking pelters every day.
One day you wake up and the latest crisis has just broken your spirit and will to keep fighting.
Suspect it was Hamburg for Messick. So jumped IMO.
The dual WC hasn’t helped either.
Yes he can sense a catastrophe and row back coming….some other dude can handle that
I heard they cant even give spots away. Rolled donw to anyone who finished at Bolton and Frankfurt apparently
AHEM 
Would you like to spend over £10k to fly to the other side of the world, to be surrounded by Type A nut-jobs?
It’s funny how the mystique has changed in a very short time. Okay, it was always expensive…but.
Well exactly. Its gone from people tattoing themselves with the company logo and desperately trying to get a place to spend thousands to get to Kona, to races being cancelled because not enough people sign up and no one wanting WC spots, in a few years.
Messick’s blundering hasn’t helped but there were always massive Kona headwinds coming….Covid….prices on the Island have gone from very expensive to fucking insane……cost of living crisis……peak Ironman has passed as other endurance events are taking bites out of it regardless of what he did etc.
The fickle nature of humans, now changing even quicker in the age of social media and influencers chasing their likes and trying to stay relevant!
All those headwinds makes trying to massively expand the World Champs seem even more like a misstep. How long before it is back to a single day at Kona?
The Hawaii situation is off the scale but it’s happening in other races as well. Several reports of the ols ‘cancel and rebook at double/triple’ happening at UTMB (lo and behold, who have they now partnered with!).
It’s been happening at Comrades as well, especially the Pietermaritzburg end. My friend had his canned and then got an email advising he could re-book at less than triple but more than double and it seemed like it was happening to others. I had a call with a guy that runs tours and he said it’s getting worse.
Greed isn’t unique to IM but they seem to have it pretty well fine tuned!
Miss-step but it was (from their perspective) a financial necessity to try.
Despite everything they’ll get c4000 athletes racing across the two WC’s at $1600 a pop.
From a pure short term financial perspective it’s a success. We don’t know to the extent that PE owners have forced Messick down the road of sweating their most valuable asset more against his own instincts.
Easier for a new guy to roll this back.
That will depend on the locals wanting it back to that - it seems many would not wish it.
The demographic has historically been affluent Type A middle class people, who will find the money to achieve the next goal, or more recently Instagram likes/follows or whatever drives them.
I ‘found’ the sport through images of guys with big 'taches in speedos doing insane stuff in Hawaii, and a programme about Nice in the late 80s. I don’t think it’s the same now, or for a long time.
Got used to the dough?
Again 
Although if Wanda still own Ironman, I don’t know about the culture of females in CEO roles?
I knew about it vaguely through WWoS on Ch9 in Oz. I saw my first IM quite by accident as I was on a bucks weekend in Forster when it was on. (I think I’ve told the story of us buying a texture and marking our arms to impress the ladies 
).
But it really delved into it after being asked to be part of a team in the Sydney BRW race. One guy and me really got bitten by the bug. (he qualified for Kona at his 2nd IM !)
The one day Kona is dead it will never go back.
Challenge for the new CEO is to create something c4000 athletes want to race at c$1600 a pop every year in a sport with declining new entrants and a hard core of old lags who, like the old members of say Yorkshire cricket club, will be grumbling and pining for the old days in perpetuity.
Roth still has the magic