September 23, 2024 Let’s start with the base numbers for a moment. 1,451 women registered for the 2024 IRONMAN World Championships in Nice, representing 65 different countries, regions or territories. And while yes, that represents a nearly 30% drop in the figure between the 2023 Worlds (held in Kona), there are a couple of mitigating factors in play.
First, there’s this year’s qualification cycle. There were only two races in North America in calendar year 2024 that qualified women for Nice — that’d be IRONMAN Texas and IRONMAN Lake Placid. Otherwise, if you were based in the U.S. or Canada and wanted to go Worlds slot hunting, you needed to travel relatively extensively internationally before another international trip for worlds. And then those races in late 2023 that were also available were in conflict with last year’s Kona dates. It made it more difficult to pull women from IRONMAN’s most populous participatory region. Still, just under a third of the field came from the United States. (The combined European region had the most athletes, with 47% of the field.)
And second is the Nice course. In talking with many athletes, the bike course in particular was a daunting challenge. For some, the descents were a more consistent talking point than the climbs. It was not dissimilar from some talk we heard about the 2021 IM Worlds held in May 2022 in St. George. If you can’t train riding downhill, it’s hard to prep for that challenge.
But even when you factor those […]
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