A ticket to Kona is the most exclusive invitation in all of endurance sport. Only the freakishly fit, most tenacious, -endowed athletes qualify for the world championship at various Ironman races around the globe. But since 1983, Ironman has left the back door for its marquee event slightly ajar via a lottery program in which 100 age groupers can qualify each year. Last week the federal government deemed that program illegal and shut it down. Here鈥檚 what鈥檚 in store for future Kona hopefuls.

In the past, for $50 an athlete could enter the lottery. If selected, he or she paid an additional $850 to register for the race, the same registration fee as any competitor. In March, Ironman announced the 100 lottery winners for the 2015 race, ranging in age from 20 to 74, and representing 16 countries. But they will be the last class of athletes to make it to Kona through the current lottery system.

The federal government鈥檚 鈥渧iew was that for the last 30 years we鈥檝e been operating an illegal gambling enterprise and that the Kona lottery under Florida anti-gambling and anti-lottery statutes is illegal,鈥� said Ironman CEO . 鈥淲e do not have a license to conduct gambling operations, and the government鈥檚 view is that this is gambling.鈥� Without admitting any wrongdoing, Ironman has paid $2,761,910 to the government for money collected from the lottery dating back to October 2012, a negotiated date.听

鈥淭here is an old American saying, 鈥榊ou can鈥檛 fight City Hall,鈥欌�� Messick wrote in an all-company memo. 鈥淩ather than undertake what we expect would be a protracted dispute with the federal government, we chose to settle and move forward.鈥�

So what happens next? Athletes who entered the lottery this year will still be able to race, but the future is less certain. Athletes can still enter the race through Ironman鈥檚 , which rewards athletes who have raced 12 or more Ironmans with a Kona slot. (In 2012, Ironman took 100 slots from the main lottery, which up to then offered 200 slots, to create the Legacy Program.) Messick says the Legacy Program fulfills the founders鈥� original goal with the lottery, which is 鈥渢o find the pathway to Kona for athletes that aren鈥檛 blessed with great athletic ability.鈥澨�

But few athletes have raced 12 Ironmans. And while the is 30, it could take most dedicated athletes decades to complete a dozen events. To appease fans not eligible for Legacy slots, Ironman is also considering a smaller scale lottery that would be free, but Messick says the company is concerned that having no barrier to entry will clog the lottery with people who have never gone the distance.

However Messick suggests the age-group race may simply absorb the slots. 鈥淭here are a number of modifications that could be possible, but since the DOJ has given us no indication of what is and is not legal in their view we are having to be very conservative,鈥� Messick says. 鈥淲e are under enormous pressure to find slots for all the people who want to go to Kona, and while we will miss the lottery we鈥檙e happy to have the 100 slots back because we believe we can put those to good use for age-groupers.鈥� But there are several better ways to allocate those Kona slots.

Ironman should put a handful of them towards growing female participation in the sport through the company鈥檚 own (of which I am a founding board member), launched in December in conjunction with Life Time Fitness. The board is developing a variety of programs to attract more women into the sport. We鈥檙e launching a team of ambassadors who will support new athletes through a variety of outreach efforts, for example. We also plan to create female-specific content and training programs, and highlight .听

In support of the broader Women For Tri objective, Ironman could give Kona slots as incentives to tri clubs and ambassadors to drive programs aimed at getting more women involved in triathlon. Ironman could reward an ambassador for recruiting the most women to do a certain race, for example, or give a slot to an all-female tri club to use to promote their activities. Ironman could give Women For Tri slots to auction off and use the proceeds to pay for advertising in a national women鈥檚 magazine or for other key marketing strategies. Whatever is done, the basic idea is to use Kona slots for grassroots efforts to promote the cause.听Having access to Kona slots would help raise the profile and visibility of Women For Tri鈥檚 efforts.

A lot of people have also suggested using these newly released slots to even up the pro field in Kona (current count is 50 slots for pro men and 35 slots for pro women, plus the pros that auto qualify at regional championship races). I鈥檓 a proponent of equal representation of pros in Kona, and while I鈥檓 more supportive of a 40-40 breakdown in Kona, both to keep the race highly competitive, and so as not to take slots from deserving age-groupers, I do believe that taking 15 slots from the lottery program and adding them to the pro women鈥檚 field can produce significant positive results for Ironman and the sport at large.听

As for the rest of those slots, there鈥檚 no reason to abandon a lottery system altogether. If the new regulations allow it, Ironman should create a no-cost system听that lets Ironman finishers enter into a free lottery,听much like ultrarunners must finish a to enter the , then pay an entry fee only if they鈥檙e selected to race. Kona is an unforgiving race that demands legitimate preparation. Finishing a qualifying Ironman ensures that the lottery isn鈥檛 diluted with athletes who aren鈥檛 committed to the training or end goal鈥攔acing in Kona.听

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Ironman is a pretty enlightened place when it comes to gender equality. Men and women have enjoyed equal prize purses at Ironman's World Championship race in Kona听since the event started offering cash to winners in 1986. And at each of the 100 Ironman races around the world, the pro men and women split winnings equally. But there鈥檚 one major sticking point: there are 15 more slots for pro听male competitors at Ironman鈥檚 World Championship in Kona than there are for women. In a recent statement, , defending the decision to not close the gap. But it鈥檚 time things evened up for our pros, for the greater good of the sport. 听

Throughout the event鈥檚 history, more male than female pros have toed the line at Kona. (See chart below.) Before 2011, pro Kona slots totaled 10 percent of the total number of slots assigned to a particular race. If there were 100 total Kona slots awarded at the IM Wisconsin event, for example, 10 of those slots would go to pro athletes. The number of males and females who earned a spot was then allocated based on the percentage of male and female pros at that specific event. Say 100 pros raced, for example鈥�60 men, 40 women. In that case, six men and four women would qualify. Because more men than women raced, more men earned a spot at Kona.

Kona Pro Starters 2003-2014

But in 2011, World Triathlon Corporation, the private equity-owned company that puts on the global Ironman series, instituted听a more complicated points-system approach for pros.听With an expanding global race portfolio鈥攁nd each race offering Kona qualifying spots鈥擶TC adjusted the pro qualifying process to get only听the most competitive athletes on the Kona start line. With the new points system, the number of pro qualifiers shrank from a peak of 156 pros in 2008 (98 men, 58 women) to 89 pros last year, while the overall number of Kona competitors rose from 1,867 to 2,301. Now the top 50 pro men, as determined by the newer points-based ranking system, get to go to Kona. But only the top 35 women do. For a professional world championship event, the numbers seem arbitrary.

鈥淚magine Wimbledon without 64 men and 64 women,鈥� says Ironman champion Sara Gross, who holds a Ph.D. in Women鈥檚 History. 鈥淭here is no example in sport that I know of where the number of听women allowed at a world听championship听event is decided based on听participation听numbers whether at the elite level or women generally. In some major marathons in the U.S., we have more women participating than men. So should we limit the number of elite males who can enter that marathon? That听sounds ridiculous, right?鈥�

Gross is a key driver behind a social media and letter-writing campaign called 50 Women to Kona that calls for equal slots for women as for men. The effort is , both male and female, including four-time Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington. Gross asks why triathletes should accept the inequality in Kona slots听when they鈥檝e never had to accept unequal prize purses. 鈥淲e are so close to having it all,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚听as if听we are stopping 100 meters from the finish line.鈥�

WTC says the logic for the current disparity in听Kona slot allotments is based on gender representation in the Ironman pro athlete ranks. In 2014, there were 739 pro men and 381 pro women in the Ironman system. Put simply, the men get 15 more slots than the women because they nearly double the women in numbers.

That's not all.听Ironman CEO Andrew Messick says giving women more slots听would actualy hurt pro women in the long run听because he believes those slots will go to slower pros who might not be able to听beat the age groupers. 鈥淗aving a separate, lower standard for women sends the wrong message and would be the first time in Ironman history that we are creating听one,”he says.听WTC pointed out in an email that in past years, such as in听2010, when the pro field was much larger,听鈥渕any pros were beaten by the age-group field鈥攔esulting in concern that the World Championship was losing its prestige.鈥�

Furthermore, Messick says the overwhelming demand for Kona slots across all divisions鈥攑ro and amateur鈥攃reates the need to approach slot allocation in a highly systematic way.听Tacking an additional 15 entries onto such a large听race (last year, it听hosted 2,301 athletes), Messick argues, is not easy. He claims听race venue is at capacity, making it difficult to simply add more slots. Additional slots would have to come from the pro men or age groupers.

鈥淥nly three percent of age-group athletes qualify for Kona, and an overwhelming number of people who qualify for Kona take their slot,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he groups of athletes that have the most people participating should have proportional representation in the world championship.鈥澨�

Because there are far more men racing than women (most races have a 70-30 split), Messick believes arbitrarily creating a system of quotas for the pro women, when only the top three percent of age groupers qualify,听is wrong. 鈥淲e feel that it鈥檚 antithetical to the spirit of Ironman,鈥� Messick says.

Kona Competitors 2005-2014, By Gender

That gets us to the core of the debate听between the WTC and its pro athletes: whether or not the pros should receive special consideration because of their elite status.

Amateur triathletes in Kona aren鈥檛 there to earn a paycheck. For pros, who make up only four percent of the field, the stakes are very different; for many of them, their livelihoods are linked to an appearance in Kona, the most high-vis event of the year. The pro women aren't buying any of WTC's arguments鈥攖hat 15 extra female racers will diminish Kona's prestige, or听that adding 15 slots is unfair to age groupers.听(WTC did, afterall, add 145 age group听Kona slots between 2013 and 2014.)听The three-percent rule or something similar, they argue, should not apply to them.听

The pro women I spoke with say adding the slots will not lower the bar for pro women. Instead, they believe just the opposite will happen: equivalent representation in Kona will ultimately raise the profile of the sport and draw more women鈥攁n endgame that would tremendously benefit Ironman鈥檚 bottom line, considering that 81 percent of people who raced Ironman events in 2014 were male. Opportunity breeds growth, they say, and Ironman can stand as a powerful and inviting example of total gender inclusivity by closing a gap of a mere 15 spaces.

While Messick seems to understand the sentiment, he鈥檚 not sold on it. 鈥淚 appreciate the belief that 鈥榠f you build it, they will come,鈥� and I would be curious as to whether there鈥檚 any evidence to support that,鈥� he says.听

But maybe the fight for Kona slot equality isn鈥檛 about hard proof or ratios. Maybe pro women like Gross have a case built on an ideal that can鈥檛 be measured or countered in simple math.

I鈥檓 not advocating for 500 more slots for the women (i.e. adopting a sweeping policy of equal Kona slots for men and women in both amatuer and pro ranks), but I do believe that equal representation of pro women is the right step鈥攁nd message鈥攊n laying a foundation for future sustainable growth of our sport.

Ironman has been a true pioneer in holding up women to a new standard, helping them dream a little bigger and enabling significant earning opportunities as they pursue their triathlon goals. Taking the final step by providing equitable professional representation at the world championship can close the circle and set us all up for success.

鈥淜ona is about the experience of everyone coming together and supporting that passion for Ironman,鈥� says Julie Moss,听the woman whose is largely credited with bringing the fringe event into global consciousness. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a part of Ironman that鈥檚 about heart and soul. I say, let鈥檚 err on the side of heart and soul.鈥�

Julia Polloreno is the editor-in-chief of Triathlete and , and a founding board member of , the Ironman/Life Time Fitness initiative to grow women鈥檚 participation in the sport.

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