IRONMAN Lanzarote Race Director Fabio Cabrera Finds His Own Way

Working as a race director of an IRONMAN race is no easy task. Taking over the position from a man whose legacy is so great that he’s been inducted into the IRONMAN Hall of Fame just adds to the pressure. And, while Fabio Cabrera is all-too-aware of the legacy of the event that he took over from race founder Kenneth Gasque, at the time, Cabrera was so ingrained in the day to day realities of the race, he never even thought about the daunting task he was taking on.

Cabrera was already working at Club La Santa, the resort that puts on the IRONMAN race, when he was tapped for the task. He’d started as an aikido instructor (he has a black belt in the discipline), and then took on a management position where he was responsible for scheduling the huge group of instructors (known as the Green Team) at the resort. As Gasque neared retirement, management asked Cabrera if he would be interested in taking over the direction of the race.

“I’m proud to be directing this event because it came from Club La Santa and from Kenneth Gasque,” Cabrera says. “When you take over something like this, it’s because someone, at some point, trusts you. And, of course, you want to give back this trust.”

Cabrera credits his time with Gasque and his close team members including Isabel Jansens and Sara Perani (who remains on the team) with the direction to keep things going.

“It was an honour for me to spend time with Kenneth, Isabel and  Sara – the team that started this – and to learn from all of them,” he says. “These people were the ones that started showing me the meaning of Club La Santa and the meaning of IRONMAN and the meaning of all the other races. For example, the Volcano Triathlon is the oldest triathlon in Spain.”

The powers that be at Club La Santa nailed their pick – Cabrera is quick to acknowledge that ultimately what he shares with Gasque and the rest of the team is a passion for the events and the island. 

“I mean, he (Gasque) was passionate about the races, and when you have a guy that is showing you, but not only showing you, you are learning from him, and you see that you have the same DNA, that you think the same,” Cabrera continues. “We love sports. We breathe sports. It was like I was saying ‘I’m all in with you, Mr. Kenneth.’”

For Cabrera, being from the Canary Islands adds a special bit of pride about the race, too. 

“When you know the island, not only because I’m a Canarian, but also because I know all the tracks, everything about this island, and all the events … it’s easy to see how special it is,” he says. “I think that’s what makes this event special for me, because I want to share with people what is special about Lanzarote. It isn’t about the distance, because there are IRONMAN races everywhere in the world … I don’t want to only to focus this event as a sports event. I want the focus to be on this being a sports tourism event for Lanzarote and for Club La Santa.”

Cabrera credits the magic around the race to the combination of two powerful brands. The roots of IRONMAN Lanzarote stem from Gasque’s vision of bringing an IRONMAN race to the island after he competed in Kona. To him the two islands were so similar that it just made sense to host an event at his new home in the Canaries. Since he worked at Club La Santa, the race would also help attract athletes to the resort and the island. Once people experience the race, though, Cabrera thinks that ultimately it’s the magic of the island that keeps people coming back.

“At the end of the day, from my perspective, nothing is more powerful than the Lanzarote brand,” he says. “Of course, everything depends on the IRONMAN brand. But after all this has been created, and all these people come here every year who keep saying that this is their favourite race, that’s because this island has something special.”

At some level the race has almost become a victim of its own success. If the goal was to bring people to the island and Club La Santa, it has worked. The resort has an occupancy rate of over 96%, and while other resorts and hotels aren’t as busy, they can be busy enough. The Barcelo Active Resort in Costa Teguise might only have one 50 m pool compared to Club La Santa’s three, but it’s routinely jam packed through the winter.

Cabrera also points out that many of the sport’s best athletes spend time on the island, but don’t necessarily do the race.  Sure, Club La Santa ambassadors including Lucy Charles-Barclay and Anne Haug have won IRONMAN Lanzarote, but so many others , including Kristian Blummenfelt, Gustav Iden and Casper Stornes (who we caught up with on the island – stay tuned for that story), train on the island but don’t have any plans to do the race.

“This is why I think we need to be very grateful and say thank you to the brand, to IRONMAN, that we were able to create this opportunity – a lot of triathletes wouldn’t have known about Lanzarote without IRONMAN Lanzarote,” Cabrera says.

While the IRONMAN has been the flagship event for Club La Santa for years, there are a number of long-standing and new events that are becoming popular as well. 

As mentioned, the Volcano Triathlon (the oldest triathlon in Spain), continues in April. There’s a four-stage mountain bike event in September that will be enjoying the 24th edition this year that includes a time trial 21 km followed by three more challenging stages of 50 to 56 km. 

Three years ago Cabrera and his team started the Vuelta Cyclista A Lanzarote, a 189 km, non-competitive cycling event in October that runs over two days and pretty much covers the entire island. 

Then there’s the International Running Challenge, a four-day running adventure that includes four days of running kicking off with a 10 km run on Sunday morning, a 13 km Ridge Run on Monday, a 5 km Beach Run and rounds out with a 21 km effort on the Wednesday. 

For Cabrera, the development of these events is the logical extension of what Gasque and his team started almost 35 years ago. 

“Of course, you create the item in 92, but from 92 to 26 a lot of things have changed,” he says. “The profile of athletes has changed, the number of events has changed. Alot of things have changed, so I am adapting to the market and the situation according my personality and the team that I have created. So, in the end, I’ve never felt any pressure to live up to anything – I had the opposite. I have the pride to keep what they created. I want to keep improving and making things better. On top of it all is Club La Santa. The organization is always bringing good workers. So, taking over from this Hall of Fame member, Kenneth Gasque, it’s a responsibility in terms of we need to keep the standards up. I think we’ve proven that we’re doing that.”

To prove his point, Cabrera points to the IRONMAN satisfaction surveys from the race in Lanzarote over the last few years – the race has scored above the global average for three years in a row. 

“This means that we are doing good things,” he says. “We are on the right track.” 

Despite that success, IRONMAN Lanzarote has struggled to get the same numbers of registrants as it enjoyed in the early 2010s, which saw some years with over 2,000 competitors. Cabrera attributes that to the number of IRONMAN events in Spain. 

“Ironman Lanzarote was, until 2014, the only Ironman in Spain and that’s why, at that point, we got 2,300 athletes,” he says. “After that, of course the brand had to expand and IRONMAN started opening other events in Spain. Suddenly people didn’t need to fly. They don’t need to come to an island to do a race. They don’t have to do an event that’s this tough. So, of course, the numbers since 2014 have started decreasing.”

Cabrera says that it’s not only triathlon races that struggle to compete with events on the mainland – while half marathon races on mainland Spain routinely draw fields of 10,000 or more, the half on the island has maxed out at 3,000. Despite that, Cabrera doesn’t see any changes coming in the near future to what the folks at Club La Santa are doing. 

“It’s hard to compete because we have the ocean in the middle,” he says. “But it’s still part of the Club La Santa DNA. Club La Santa and IRONMAN has been, and will always be. part of each other. Because Club La Santa has always been very proud – and I’m so proud to say we are organizing IRONMAN Lanzarote here. And IRONMAN should be very proud to say that the best sports hotel in the world is part of its identity. IRONMAN Lanzarote, and Club La Santa, have been part of IRONMAN’s history. Without this race, a lot of people in Europe would never have started their journey into the IRONMAN world.” 

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