Triathlon’s Attitude Problem is Going to Cost Us Places to Race

IRONMAN recently hosted a new full-distance race in the United States for the first time since the one-off IRONMAN Alaska in 2022. IRONMAN Jacksonville welcomed 1,900 entrants for its inaugural edition, with approximately 1,400 athletes crossing the finish line. For a new, early-season IRONMAN that had a relatively short runway (only being announced in early September of last year), it was a success from an athlete perspective.

It also, however, was a massive traffic disruptor in the area. Traffic was snarled for hours, as reported by local news. As one would probably expect for a full-distance race, the biggest issue was the bike course. Drivers were frequently stuck, or re-routed constantly as they attempted to find a way around the course. Some, unfortunately, took matters into their own hands, with two collisions with athletes; none were deemed serious. There was also a near-miss with a drunk driver who swerved through both the bike and run courses; he was arrested and charged with eight felonies and a dozen misdemeanors.

These types of issues are common and, in Jacksonville’s case, for two reasons. First, it’s the general type of teething problems that come from hosting an event in a city for the first time. You don’t ever really know how traffic will ebb and flow on race day until you’ve seen where the choke points actually are, and how drivers respond to it. The second, of course, is the population density of the area. There’s approximately 1.8 million residents in the Jacksonville metro area, and is the 38th most populous metro area in the country. It’s the third largest metro area to currently host an IRONMAN event, trailing The Woodlands and Sacramento.

In other words — it’s a lot of people. And, despite IRONMAN and the city of Jacksonville putting it just about everywhere that the race was coming and that there would be traffic impacts (heck, me here in Oregon saw it on every platform I can think of), that’s just too many people to really know that it’s happening. Even local government officials claimed, after the fact, that they did not know that the race was going to be impacting their community until either the day before the event, or while sitting in traffic.

As you would expect, the complaints were thick and fast from residents. The sheriff of St. John’s County, where a large part of the bike course took place, denounced the event and discouraged it from returning. For its part, Jacksonville released a statement, acknowledging that there had been pain points but that they were committed to following through on their three-year contract with IRONMAN.

“We are a world-class city, and IRONMAN chose us because of that. We benefit from the tremendous economic impact, the global exposure, the energy on our riverfront, and the pride on the faces of athletes crossing that finish line. We have a three-year commitment to this exciting event, and we intend to honor it by getting better every year IRONMAN Jacksonville comes to town. That means celebrating what worked and being honest about what could have been done better.

We are committed to a smoother experience for everyone next year, and are already in conversations with IRONMAN organizers, JSO, and city staff to conduct a full after-action review to make sure traffic and safety concerns are meaningfully addressed.“

Those conversations started the Monday following the event. All of this seems normal.

What is not normal, though, was the online discourse of some members of our broader multisport community, and the belittling of those who had taken issue with the IRONMAN event. Some of those comments, posted publicly on various social platforms, include the following:

• Directed at St. John’s County Sheriff Robert Hardwick: “Tough shit! Get with the program young fella!”
• Towards a couple whose wedding was disrupted by traffic: “I do feel bad for those that had wedding planned, but….they should have backup plans for sure and it’s not like brides aren’t checking everything prior to.”
• “I’m so sick of hearing all the complaints. It was one day. What’s the problem?”
• “Oh, but it blocked all those businesses that couldn’t get any business along the blocked roads! I loved that argument, one day of business as opposed to the week that people not normally in town were going to be there.”
• “The ignorant, impatient, entitled people in our society never ceased to amaze me. Oh lawd, it took me 10 extra minutes to get home today. The world is coming to an end!!”
• “Those people are just jealous they aren’t Ironmans!!”

And this, my fellow triathletes, is how we piss off the communities we are entirely dependent on in order to even have races in the first place.

Let’s rip off the band aid: we are neither as inspirational nor special as our sport (including us, here at Slowtwitch) tell ourselves. Triathlon, and especially full distance triathlon, is a logistical nightmare on its best days. What generally makes for a fantastic course for athletes (closed to traffic, scenic, single-loop) are hellacious for the communities hosting us. It’s how we wound up with the multi-loop courses at the former IRONMAN Arizona, and currently in The Woodlands for Texas; it helps to minimize the disruption because to have as safe of a course as possible, you must limit interactions with vehicles.

We, as athletes, are not entitled to have races on these roads. It’s why there’s a permitting process. It’s why there are so many stakeholders at play. And we ultimately need to be good partners. That partnership extends from just showing up and spending dollars in these communities, but by also understanding their concerns and needs while visiting their cities and towns. It means, for instance, spending money in some of the communities beyond those where swim or transition is located. Or it might mean ensuring that you know the traffic laws of that community while out on a ride.

But, what it is not part of that entitlement is simply sweeping complaints under the rug, and assuming that because you spend money in a community, that people should be thankful for your presence. There are significantly less challenging and expensive ways to draw tourism dollars to an area than hosting a full-distance triathlon. And we’ve seen time and time again that we wear the welcome mat thin in some of our host communities. We came close to losing IRONMAN Lake Placid. The aforementioned Alaska race was a one-and-done experience. St. George recently said enough was enough.

The line, to me, is clear: we, collectively, need to be better. And that starts by not throwing people who have concern about the impact of our races under the bus.

Tags: