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A big thanks to Salomon for flying me out to Kona this year and to Roka for supporting our Kona coverage.
Bonus: You can now win a pair of Roka’s R2 goggles as part of our podium predictions contest. Get your picks in before the race starts.
How many women is the right number of women?
jk, there is no right answer
There will either be 2,548 athletes or 2,612 athletes on the start line on Saturday, probably depending on if you count people who have already pulled out. (Yes, I’ve asked Ironman about the discrepancy in their own reported numbers.) And 27% of those athletes will be women.
I’ve seen a lot of AI-generated “facts” about women’s participation. Most of which are not accurate, purely statistically speaking. But it’s pretty easy to look around on the ground in Kona and be like: Whoa, OK, there are not very many women here.
And that is one of the fundamental problems with Ironman announcing its “women’s initiative” at the same time as our return-to-one-day Kona. There’s a fundamental perception gap between saying you really really want to achieve 50% women’s participation and you really really mean it now, and looking around and seeing just 27% women.
What is ‘Woven?’
A lot of people don’t understand what Ironman’s Woven women’s initiative really is. So I asked Ironman to send me their actual documents after they tried to explain it to me, and after I’ve heard about it from people working on it, and here’s what I understand:
It’s an internal effort coming out of a survey of 10,000 women across Ironman events and the triathlon-curious
That, then, identified key (obvious) pain points for women: they don’t see themselves in Ironman marketing, there are necessary women’s-specific event accommodations and issues, and women need other women to talk to and train with/around (because, holy shit, there are so many dudes)
Woven is a number of small things, then, that address many of those issues after working with some smart people (to varying degrees): female-specific marketing, tracking of women’s specific race data and responses, race policy standardization (like pregnancy deferral guidelines and lactation stations), women’s ambassadors and community events and content, and targeted efforts at a handful of 70.3 events to see what truly drives female participation
Could it work? Sure. Have we heard this before? Sure. Do we just need to wait and see what they actually do now? Absolutely.
More TK.
BONUS: Feisty is selling ‘Here For The Women’s Race’ shirts at Voyagers in the Kona Inn shopping center every morning this week. Because, we are 100$% here for the women’s race.
💭 Where are all of the men’s and women’s Kona champs now?! Obviously, Peter Reid has had the most interesting life post-win (as a bush pilot). And Robin Beck is my most respected: “No one knows where Robin Beck is or what she is up to. She is a mystery.” Mad props.
🚲 There was one bad age-grouper bike crash today — her bike is cracked in two — but no wide-spread reports yet of jellyfish swarms. We did hear from people who saw jellyfish but didn’t get stung.
📺 Ironman announced a split screen option on smart TVs where you’ll be able choose how many + what feeds you want to see this weekend. The additional video feeds will come with no commentary — audio is only available on the main feed — and the split screen is only a smart TV feature. (Getting a demo later today, will report back.)
❤️ The from-the-ground in Kona gossip: And if I was making a bet, I would notice that Ironman world champ Chelsea Sodaro is being excluded from the official media kits and from the press conference and from the brand pre-race events, and I would think that maybe she’s going to be ready to prove on race day that you all overlooked her, because it is goddamn wild to exclude an Ironman world champ from the Ironman pre-race press conference. IF I WAS A BETTING PERSON.
A (semi) fun fact
Enter Gustav Iden’s fundraiser to win his bike and raise money for cancer research in honor of his mom.
Thanks to our sponsors
Salomon - Come to Kona Heaven tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday) from 2-4pm to meet Courtney Dauwalter and Jessie Diggins
Roka - Come to the pier at 8am tomorrow (Wednesday) to test out the best swimskins on the market — they’ll have swimskins available to demo — and swim with Flora Duffy
I wonder how Ironman decided who should get a survey because I never got one 🙃 re Chelsea, I always have the sense that she doesn’t beat around the bush to give you PR sanitized responses and maybe that’s their way of punishment? Idk; so much for saying you want to elevate and include women