Some, but not all. I haven’t come across any for 100km races, but have seen them for a few of the gnarlier 100 milers. But definitely not all.
I think you have to qualify for all the Centurion events, usually with the minimum of a marathon. I think an IM marathon also counts.
You’d like to think so 
1st - I reckon they need to put some sort of qualifying in place and bring back some ‘status’ to the event.
Sure you can ‘one and done’ if you’ve done a 70.3 in, let’s say, 6 hours (AG and course dependent) and the 16/17 cutoff in the event is basically a safety cutoff because they have to close the course, or if you get injured or something, not a time you try and scrape within.
They should also drop the entry fees, I don’t care what the IPO/public listing says, most Challenge events are much cheaper.
2nd - When they do put them on they need to be more considerate of the athletes. Every other event you do it is about the people taking part, at IM it is about ‘supporting the brand’ (however much they try and spin it otherwise.)
As I say, the one I did was pretty exhaustive and just for a half marathon. Seemed a bit overkill, but they were running a 45 mile ultra on the same day, so maybe it just makes their life easier if both races kit was the same?
It was along the lines of the following:
- Drink container(s) of 500ml capacity or greater - and at least 500ml of fluid at the start.
- Windproof jacket - full sleeved
- Emergency nutrition (a gel, energy bar, some sweets, etc.)
- Head covering (hat, multi-use covering, hood)
- Mobile phone, charged, on, and with volume up
- Foil blanket or full-sized bin liner
- Whistle
- First aid kit, including
- tape (micropore, zinc oxide, flexible, or similar)
- plasters
- blister plasters
- small wound dressing (absorbent pad with a gauze bandage)
Yes, that’s a lot for a Half, unless it’s across the Cuillin Ridge.
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Agree tri community should encourage that which we do via clubs and on here to avoid burnout, but I don’t think organisers can stipulate shorter events and build up as people have autonomy to make their own decisions. I’d support doing a mandatory half as part of your way up to a full, to prove you’re safe and have chance of making cut offs but that’d be it.
Wasn’t there something about one of the full distances in the East (Philippines, or something like that) requiring evidence of a 70.3 in recent history to validate entry? I think they pitched it as being required due to the extreme heat and humidity conditions.
Can’t seem to find anything about it now though
2012 completely changed my club. I was chair and i said at the time, this is going to change us massively, we need to make a decision, include everyone or basically shut the door and have applications. Obviously that final one is against my inclusive philosophy and virtually overnight we went from 80 members to over 200 and with that we went from a group of mates doing triathlon to race to a social club of cliques and a bunch of i want it my way or I’ll shout and stamp my feet types who rarely race and just want to socialise. With 80members we had 40 core who did every swim, bike and run session. Last year i was still coaching their junior sessions and the seniors were getting 6 or 8 to a swim with 250 members! I haven’t raced in 4 years and I’m probably being harsh as my experiences were negative but if that clubs demographic and IMJ types is what is now the norm I dont really want to be part of it.
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Do they need to keep coming back? Agree with @Jorgan later point that triathlon and especially ironman has become excessively normalised. How can it be normal for all of us to keep doing ironman year after year, surely there just aren’t that many interested people. In same way I dont do bungee jumping or skydiving regularly, they were activities I wanted to experience and that is what Ironman brand have deliberately turned themselves into. They have done phenomenal to convince the world its a challenge everyone can achieve, but participation will inevitably drop in the West now that lots of one and done’s are, well, done.
That said, yes there is of course a whole bunch of people who could sustainably do triathlon but not long course distances. Hence tri-a-tri events and sprints are very popular. The problem facing triathlon is the lack of status with other distances that people see ironman as synonymous with triathlon. We need to raise the status of shorter and Olympic tri (both in terms of pros and std dist races, or via super league etc) so that’s seen as an exciting event rather than only being for beginners or building towards a full distance. I met with a coach last week for first time, loosely discussed goals but he was clearly shocked when I suggested I wasn’t certain I wanted to race long course.
Lots and lots of other interesting points in this thread to discuss regarding health of Ironman company and ironman sport but that’s my take on participation numbers at ironman
The spirit tri series looks great. If I could lock in for 4 tri trips in a season I would do that.
https://www.spiritmultisport.com/
(they do a single entry for spain/germany/austria & france)
Finished reading thread so far, clearly fell behind actually doing some work this afternoon 
it’s a shame what @gingerbongo says if ultras are going same overly commerical way, I enjoyed a couple of trail runs organised by long distance walk association for £10,and am looking forward to first sportif and Audax this autumn again for similar prices and hopefully just enjoyable days out.
Having tried an Ultra Fondo cycling event, I can see that there is a world of brutal events beyond Ironman, must try Ultra running next in my tour of one and done’s (just joking).
Regarding qualification… what about all of the other iron distance races whom the one-and-done crowd could turn to? - Can’t do IMUK as cba with 70.3? Go and do the Outlaw. Nobody in the office will challenge your bragging.
Basically means IM would be giving a huge chunk of their market share away to other, smaller iron distance races. Not a business decision I could ever imagine they would come out with.
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Kona: alternate years men/women. Whichever gender is not at Kona has their world champs at rotating venues 1 week earlier.
Doubles the world champ £££, also allows them to have some sort of bidding war for the other venues, and there must be value to the brand in putting it on the road.
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Completely agree and pretty much feel the same too. My club saw a similar increase, although those numbers have dropped off again, and we’re probably at the lowest I can remember right now.
It’s still the same old people that do everything to keep the club running as the new members came and went without ever contributing anything.
We had to close our junior section a couple of years ago due to insufficient interest in running it. At which point, without any sense of irony, all the parents who’d never lifted a finger started bitching about lack of support.
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That really does make depressing reading about the junior section, i want to get a new one up and running but dont have the time to do it alone and I know through experience its what would happen. Im at a new club now, as a coach rather than “involved” to stay away from the politix and we have 3 coaches for the juniors, total with some sessions ending up with 1 coach and 20+ kids. We are all L3 but even so the quality of session is compromised when you have 8 year olds and 16 years olds in one group. Saying that the seniors are just as short of coaches, no one commits anymore. I put on a race back in 2014, loads of offers of help until things needed doing and nothing got done so i did everything myself in the end from designing the course to permissions, the lot. The night before the race for set up 6 people showed up and 15 showed up race day to marshal. When I had a rant about it after and helping your club I got a barrage of abuse as they pay 35 a year to be a member and shouldn’t be expected to help out. These people then moan when the only race options are IM events
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I was getting round to addressing the Kona Q Matt raised. Agree world champs have to move around, I’d say hold at Kona every 3-5 years. Reason for thinking more than 5 years is to disrupt the age group cycle so people aren’t always same stage of AG.
Moving it makes more attractive to people who want to compete at WC but can’t justify holiday in Hawaii every year and want to experience other races.
There are too many people on course at Kona making drafting inevitable, from sounds of things its one of the worst races. Splitting M/F like @TROSaracen suggests to different places is a good idea but only if the race is a money maker overall, because otherwise you’re doubling race costs, closing two sets of roads etc.
I don’t think there’s enough women racing long course to fill a women-only championship race with any depth of quality. If you had equal numbers of slots for men and women at each race based on the existing Kona slot allocation you’d have at least a quarter of the female field KQ at places like Lanza with smaller female entries.
With the obvious exception of Roth, a lot of the Challenge events seem to have a very short shelf life, with races not lasting very long. I’m pretty sure that most long course events don’t make much money. Every race relies on free labour from volunteers and many have local authority support for policing etc, so if you factored in the actual cost of running a race if these had to be paid for, the entry fees probably don’t look too bad. An IM race creates a lot of disruption over a very large area for not that many athletes.