I don’t get upset often, but today the Ironman organization really annoyed me (again) and I need to write a short rant, to get it off my chest.

Last month I raced at Ironman 70.3 Musselman.  I had a fantastic race, but due to a series of errors by the Ironman organization, about 40% of the participants, did not have their swim time recorded.  I was part of that 40%.

With no way of telling who actually won each age-group, Ironman decided they would create two races. One for those with a swim time, and one for those without. Each race would have age-group winners and their own slots for World Championship Qualifying.  It was a horrible decision, but likely all that Ironman could do.

Obviously, Ironman only had one set of trophies to give out to the age-group winners on the day, and they chose to give those to the age-group winners in the group that did have swim times.  They told those of us, who should have gotten a trophy for the other race, that they would send a trophy to us by mail.  I was in that category, having finished second in my age group.

Well my trophy arrived today.  I say ‘trophy’ but it was nothing more than a participation award. The standard award trophy for placing in an age-group states the position, age group and date. So I should have gotten a plaque that said:

• • • • 2nd Place
      • Male 60-64
      • July 10th, 2022

Instead, I had the plaque in the photo above.  No indication of my age-group placement.  It made me so mad.  I can literally buy this type of plaque with my name and time on it from the Ironman website. I can come dead last in the whole race, and still get one of these.

As someone who has worked very hard to improve, in order to try and reach the podium at an Ironman event, this feels like a slap in the face.  Thousands of hour of hard work and thousands of dollars in entry fees and travel to races, for this !!

Now I know that Ironman doesn’t care one bit about its athletes; it focusses only on making money.    There are always people willing to give them large sums of money “because it’s an Ironman event” and they prey on that. So, I don’t expect anything more from them regarding this situation.  My only ‘compensation’ therefore is the ability to have a short rant about it on my blog.

Rant over…