Proportionality vs. Progress: Is Ironman Sending the Wrong Message to Women?

On Saturday April 26, in my first full Ironman, I qualified for Kona, fulfilling my coach and my hope to plan my 2025 pro season around Kona for the first time. A few days later, Ironman announced that 2025 would be the last women’s-only day at Kona (at least for now?) and that the Ironman World Championship would revert to one day at Kona combining the men’s and women’s races. 

My very first reaction was that I am so grateful that I will get to experience a women’s only day of racing this year. It sounds like the Women’s World Championship has felt deeply powerful, celebratory and satisfying to many women in the sport. My second was that I am disappointed by the one-day format but think that it is understandable in the circumstances. My third, as I started to see anecdotes from amateur athletes (men and women), dug into understanding this part of the announcement, and felt skepticism about applying different logic to the pro and amateur women’s fields, was concern about Ironman’s statement that – although importantly Kona slot allocation for pro men and women would be equal 50/50 – for amateur (age group) athletes, it would revert to being based largely on proportionality by looking at numbers of each gender signing up for races. 

I have spent the last year of my life interrogating my values in sport and part of my conclusion was that it is meaningful to me to have the amateur race going on in close proximity to the pro race as part of a broader triathlon community and event feeling that I care deeply about. I love Ironman’s events. I care that the amateur athletes are there. And I didn’t want to gloss over the amateur women being treated differently from the pro women on qualification.

As a relative newcomer to the sport (who grew up focused on track running and was only peripherally aware of Kona), I was startled to find out that women’s pro and men’s pro fields at Kona used to be based on proportionality, with fewer spots for pro women because fewer pro women were signing up to race. In a sport that has prided itself for a long time on gender equality, and that I do feel is generally a wonderful place for women athletes, this startled me a little bit. 

It turns out that for amateur races, roughly 20% of a field at any given Ironman is women. So, proportionality raises the possibility of an amateur race at Kona that is 20-25% women (Ironman is not currently saying pure proportionality to be clear, so I hope and assume they envision a number of spots for women that is at least more than 20% - more on that below). This may at first seem intuitively fair to some, but there are real concerns that 1) it is a terrible way to try to keep growing women’s participation in the sport; and that 2) when you start to dig into it and look at some data, it is not very fair.

First of all, to get this part out of the way: I am agnostic about Kona or not Kona. I just want an interesting and competitive World Championship, and I enjoy the rotation of 70.3 Worlds courses. However, I can easily understand that for many many people, Kona looms large in the sport and is important to them. The decision to revert to Kona as the only Championship location is understandable to me, and, it seems, that the logistics and political reality for the race at Kona mean that two days at Kona is not a viable option for right now (even though according to Scott DeRue on Pro Tri News, two days at Kona was preferred by a majority in Ironman’s polling). Fine.

Onto the proportionality debate. There are two prongs to it. The first prong of the debate – currently embodied by Sara Gross and Kelly O’Mara at Feisty Media – is that it doesn’t matter whether equal spots is “fair” or “unfair” to anyone in terms of whether or not it makes it easier or harder for men or women to qualify relative to their fields. Their argument, as I understand it, is that extensive data and experience from other sports – including World Triathlon and including Title IX in the United States university system and even including the development of pro women’s fields for Ironman – show that things like equal qualification spots and equal prize money and funding drive women’s participation in sport. 

Essentially, they point to evidence that suggests that trying to increase participation and THEN increasing opportunities at the highest level of a sport is getting things a bit backwards. They also argue that going backwards on spots for woman at Kona sends a message that Ironman doesn’t value its female customers and that in a bigger world of many sports that treat women’s sports equally as a matter of course, younger women in particular will just choose other sports. A big part of this position is that changes to women’s participation take 20-30 years of commitment to equality. Whereas, Ironman has given it only about 3 before changing course. 

I deeply respect Feisty Media’s experience and expertise. I think that their contribution is incredibly important. I felt like SUCH a novice listening to their emergency podcast episode on this topic in terms of how deeply and for how long they have been engaged. I also, as someone who loves long course triathlon and wants other women to love it too, feel a bit sad by how jaded they sound about the whole thing. I understand – they have been doing this advocacy for a long time. But I am not there yet. 

Onto the second prong of this debate.

The second prong of this debate is about field strength and whether or not looking at number of people signing up for races gives any indication of what is happening at the pointy end of the field. Many men – and some women  –  who contacted me when I posted on this issue are convinced that it is harder for men to qualify for Kona because their bigger amateur fields are more competitive and, therefore, require more spots. This is a part of the debate that I think Feisty Media views as a “been there, done that, proven this point, and anyway it’s a red herring if you are really serious about growing women’s participation”. Fair enough. 

However, I had not looked into this before, and, in trying to sort through the feedback from amateur men who feel their races are harder, women who agree with that, partners of amateur women who insist qualification is harder for amateur women for Kona and amateur women who insist the same, I wanted to try to see for myself what the reality might be. 

Women in Triathlon UK sent me an analysis of the amateur fields at Ironman Texas 2025 (included below). It seems to show that 84 women and 80 men came within 15% of the age group winner. Strength of field seemed consistent across age groups across genders. If you divided Kona spots based on proportionality to size of field, about 30 women would get spots and 70 men. So, 54 of the fastest women would miss out, but only 10 of the fastest men. Pro woman and respected Ontario coach Miranda Tomenson has also pointed out that taking as an example the 45-49 age group, 65 women competed in Texas and 143 men. There were 16 women under 12 hours and 24 men. This is not a big difference considering the very different numbers of people singing up. This is one set of data, people are working to expand it. I also recently came across work by an amateur male athlete and Kona finisher, Phillip Graeter, who has created an anti-proportionality petition to Ironman after crunching numbers from a much larger group of races with similar conclusions. It is worth looking at his analysis even if you take or leave the petition. 

This is not to blame men who perceive their race as “more competitive”. In the middle of the field, it might be. But, data suggests that within the band of athletes who are vying for Kona spots, it is significantly more equal than looking at the size of the field might make you believe. 

What I have kept saying over the last few days is that in my heart, I want 50/50 equal spots for women at Kona. But I am not married to that number. The tricky business needs of filling up slots seems baked into the structure of Kona for better or worse, and there is an underlying stress to all of this of selling spots and filling up the race. However, I do not think, based on what I have seen so far, that 1:4 (i.e. 25/100) is a reasonable solution if you care about amateur women’s sports.

My understanding is that 70.3 Worlds awards equal spots across gender but has fewer women signing up than men. However, women’s participation at 2024 70.3 Worlds in Taupo was 2057 women to 3087 men. So, roughly 2:3, not 1:4. My understanding (based on Scott DeRue’s interview with Pro Tri News) is that the proportion of women signing up for 70.3s is just over 25% compared to men. More women go to 70.3 Worlds than the average proportion of women signing up for 70.3 races. I think that more women should be at Kona too. 

I had a great discussion with Eric Wynn and Kevin MacKinnon on their podcast about this alongside Kyle Glass (stay tuned!). My impression was that everyone is coming at this debate from different places with different starting assumptions but that we all care about women’s sport and want women to be a big part of the long course triathlon community. I personally believe that Ironman cares about this too. I have had positive impressions so far of Scott DeRue as a leader. And I hope that even though adjustments have had to be made, Ironman won’t be satisfied with giving amateur women the short end of the stick in the Kona conundrum. 

The next step on this is to see what Ironman announces as its final break down of 2026 Kona slots and to keep engaging in good faith – but firmly – on it. And to keep loving the many things that there are to love about our sport. 

Very best wishes,

TJ

(P.S. Matt Sharpe wanted me to comment on amateur men interfering with the women’s pro race – haha so here’s my comment – it is nice on the bike to have a clean race where you can just focus on the women that you are racing. In the past, I’ve had some bad experiences with amateur men racing to catch some of us then going more slowly and interfering. However, this has not happened to me recently. The amateur men who catch up are fine as long as they keep up their speed and keep going by (my more recent experiences). It’s nice when they cheer for me too as at Oceanside. So, I have not been irritated by it recently. Bottom line is - be respectful if you are around our race and you are probably okay. I think the pack dynamics of the amateur race are tricker for everyone.)