Door County Triathlon Shows Why Local Races are Dropping 70.3 — Triathlete

On the weekend of July 12, the sandy shores of Horseshoe Bay in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin made the perfect backdrop for the Door County Triathlon. Although race weekend featured its usual sprint distance and the Mark Ernst Memorial Kids Triathlon, an Olympic distance replaced the event’s signature 70.3 race, which ran from 2008 to 2025. In a post on the Door County Triathlon’s website last May, Sean Ryan, the triathlon’s race director, said the decision was in response to a widespread plummet in long-course participation.

On the same day, in a mountain village in New Mexico, Ironman debuted the first-ever Ironman 70.3 Ruidoso, accompanied by a sprint and a 5150 Olympic. Like 80% of 2026 North American Ironman and Ironman 70.3 entries, general entries for this inaugural 70.3 sold out. And according to Ironman, numerous sell-outs for 70.3 events indicate an increase in demand for long-course races, contradicting industry data about a drop in 70.3 triathlon participation.

So which is it: are triathletes flocking to or running away from long-course triathlon? To make sense of this discrepancy, we reached out to Thom Richmond, CEO of Cal Tri Events and TriFind. Ryan also joined the conversation, sharing his own experience with the 70.3 distance – and how dropping the long-course event may be a template for other locally-owned races to stay viable in the ever-changing triathlon market.

Multiple factors contribute to drop in non-Ironman 70.3 finishes

“Our market sizing data reveals that from 2013 to 2025, participation in non-Ironman 70.3s did drop dramatically, from 34,300 finishes per year to 5,132. During the same time period, however, participation in Ironman 70.3s climbed from 39,558 to 50,368 finishes annually,” says Richmond, offering some explanations for this discrepancy. “For one, there were only 24 Ironman 70.3s in 2013. They had to produce a total of 30 races in 2025 to hit the latest finisher numbers. Simultaneously, there were 155 non-Ironman 70.3s in 2013. In 2025, there were only 53.”

“The second reason is that athletes have overwhelmingly decided that if they’re going to put in the effort to do a 70.3, they want to say they did an Ironman. This is especially true for bucket listers, who only do one long-course triathlon in their lives,” Richmond explains.

“The third is that athletes can’t or don’t want to go that far anymore, whether it’s because they don’t want to spend so much time training or they have bad knees after years of racing,” Ryan adds. “A lot are dropping to short-course races, and they love the Olympic distance and even the aquabike. We’ve adapted to accommodate these athletes and offer both.”

Door County Tri adapts to changing market conditions…again

This isn’t the first time that the Door County Triathlon has pivoted based on market demand. The event debuted in 2005, offering sprint and Olympic races until 2008.

“At that point, interest in long-course was surging because of Ironman Wisconsin and triathletes who registered for it wanted to include a 70.3 in their training. So we dropped the Olympic, and offered the sprint and 70.3 over the course of two days,” Ryan says. By 2011, the Door County Half Iron was selling out less than 24 hours after registration opened. It went on to become the largest non-Ironman 70.3-mile race in the U.S. in 2024.

“Now Ironman has gobbled up a lot of the 70.3 events at the same time that long-course popularity has decreased,” Ryan says. Door County Triathlon’s board of directors agreed to face the downturn in participation by offering the Olympic instead of the 70.3, as well as the Double Door, a competition combining the sprint on Saturday and Olympic on Sunday for those wanting more mileage. “This allowed us to accommodate athletes training for 140.6 races. But there were also unforeseen complications. We discovered that 100 people signed up for both races separately, assuming that this made them a Double Door participant. It didn’t. Fortunately, that was resolved before race day.”

Additionally, the Door County Triathlon’s course map and website had to be redesigned.

Ryan says this is an improvement on the 70.3 course, which was a double loop that went through crowded villages: “Switching from the half made a lot of things better. Now we have a scenic, challenging Olympic with a perfect lollipop loop.”

The reality of shifting focus from a half-Iron to short-course

Shifts in market conditions were the driving force behind the Door County Triathlon’s move to an Olympic, and according to Ryan, this can have implications for other grassroots 70.3s.

“As a race director or organizer of a half, it’s important to look at whether the race is meeting all of your goals in this changing landscape, including profit goals,” says Ryan, who has an MBA in Market Research from Northwestern University. By offering an Olympic instead of a 70.3, total participation in all distances of the Door County Triathlon (including relays and the aquabike) was up from 1,363 in 2025 to 1,486 in 2026.

For local triathlons replacing a half with an Olympic, the financial reality is that revenue may temporarily drop despite increased participation.

“You can’t charge as much for an Olympic as you do for a 70.3. So even though we had more athletes finish the Olympic this year than the half in 2025, profit wasn’t up. But there were cost savings,” Ryan says, sharing that payment to local law enforcement and contracted charities was down. “Staff labor was down too. We used to have 10 to 12 workers on through Monday afternoon for cleanup, but now we’re done around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.”

Watching the market, checking the boxes

Ryan cautions local 70.3s against ignoring industry trends, even if their course is in an amazing destination.

“In 2025, Ironman launched Rockford 70.3 in a blue-collar town with little course allure or post-race appeal. Meanwhile, the scenic Door County Peninsula is often referred to as the ‘Cape Cod of the Midwest,’ and we offer a post-race feast complete with cold microbrews. We had over 400 finishers, but Rockford had nearly 2,000. This confirmed my suspicion that because of Ironman’s brand appeal, the course doesn’t matter,” Ryan says. “As long as there’s an Ironman half nearby, even if it’s an inferior location, we can’t compete. Dropping the half was a humble act of surrender. So now we’re focusing on offering a premier Olympic.”

In a Door County Triathlon post-race survey, 100% of athletes said they would recommend the Olympic.

“We have every reason to believe we made the right decision by switching. We’ll continue watching the market and analyzing whether our course offerings are checking all of our boxes – promoting tourism and wellness, as well as generating proceeds for local charities and a positive financial outcome. And we’ll adapt again if we have to,” Ryan concludes. “We can’t change the market, only react to it. That might mean returning to a half or offering a quarter-iron…or maybe making our own distance.”