In a few weeks, 2,550 athletes will descend on West Hawaii for what is arguably the greatest endurance sporting event in the world: the Ironman World Championship. These athletes will be attended to by 5,000 volunteers, both community members and visitors, and will be reported on by approximately 250 credentialed members of the media, supported by hundreds of TV production and social media crew members, making this the largest media event in the state. It’s a far cry from the tiny, 15-contestant race of the first Ironman 40 years ago.
Ironman started out in 1978 as a local Hawaiian contest that combined the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, the Around Oahu Bike Ride and the Honolulu Marathon. It moved to Kailua-Kona in 1981 and today encompasses over 230 events in 53 countries, operating out of 22 offices worldwide.
World Triathlon Group owns Ironman and is in turn owned by the Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate ranking 380th on the Fortune Global 500 list (2016), chaired by Wang Jianlin, China’s fourth richest man according to Forbes (2017). Ironman is an enormously valuable brand, and like most major national and international sporting event companies, it profits from licensing, broadcast fees, merchandise, and sponsorships, with Amazon as this year’s main sponsor.
The economic impact of this explosion of visitors to our community is enormous.
According to a 2006 economic impact study, these athletes will spend about eight days on the Island of Hawaii and four more days elsewhere in the state. That same study, now rather dated and based on an athlete population 30 percent smaller than this year’s registrant pool, estimated that those visitors spent approximately $26 million in Hawaii that year.
Adjusting for increased participants and inflation, a very seat-of-the pants estimate would equate the event’s local economic impact to roughly (very) $46 million this year. That injection of cash fuels not only the businesses that cater to tourism but also the local enterprises providing goods and services to the people working in that industry. So, if you’re thinking the impact doesn’t affect you because you don’t run a restaurant or a bike shop, you’re wrong. It affects all of us economically, one way or another.
Unlike most of the enterprises profiled in this column, Ironman is the very opposite of a small business, but it operates from a small permanent footprint here in Kona, with a staff of only five, headed by Diana Bertsch, who this year celebrates the management of her 16th Ironman event. The Kona staff is responsible for overseeing both the Ironman World Championship in Kona, and the Ironman 70.3 World Championship, which is held in a different country each year, most recently earlier this month in South Africa.
Here in Kona, Diana and her staff are assisted by 18 volunteer directors and over 100 volunteer coordinators overseeing every aspect of operations.
“With well over 30 events on race week, it’s definitely the local community, the people I’m surrounded by, who keep me inspired and remind me of how special this event is,” Diana said.
Inspiration is what Ironman is all about.
“We sell a dream,” she said, “and it’s up to us to fulfill the expectations of people coming from all over the world.”
Ironman is indeed an inspirational exercise in human endurance. It inspires people who include it on their bucket lists of something they must do at least once in their lives, as well as those who are committed to it year-round and who live Ironman as a lifestyle.
For people in either of these camps, “there’s a mystique about coming to Kona for that legendary run down Alii Drive to the finish line. It’s not giving you a tangible item, you’re buying into something that is internal,” Bertsch explained.
This mystique comes at a price, with athletes spending from $7,000-$26,500 per event, a fee that includes equipment, training costs, travel, fees, and accommodations. These athletes are an average of 40 years old, two-thirds are male, 92 percent are university educated, and they must have qualified at a prior Ironman event — definitely a unique visitor cohort.
In addition to the participation of a unique contestant group, Ironman is also a unique example of community collaboration and aloha.
Bertsch’s message to residents who might be concerned about the inconveniences of race week is that “we have the opportunity to work together as a community to make something possible that can’t be touched anywhere else in the world. This island, with its landscape, history, culture and its people can show the world that working together we can put differences aside and cooperate in making something great.”
Sit back and enjoy the spectacle and show our best face to the world. The vog has abated (fingers crossed) and the Ironmen (and women) are coming!
Dennis Boyd is the director of the West Hawaii Small Business Development Center, which is funded in part with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the University of Hawaii at Hilo.