Ironman Announces Plan for Adjusting Kona Slots Due to Races Canceled by COVID-19

Ironman has revealed how it plans to adjust the slot allocations for the 2020 Ironman World Championship, set for Saturday, Oct. 10. With so many races being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the qualifying opportunities have significantly decreased, forcing Ironman to come up with a plan for reallocating some slots. To this point, nearly every Ironman event through the end of June has been rescheduled or canceled.

Ironman has now extended the qualifying end date from Aug. 23 to Aug. 30, allowing an extra weekend of races to count toward the 2020 Kona race. With the change, Ironman Canada, Ironman Kazakhstan, and Ironman Vichy will serve as qualifiers for this year and each race will offer 60 2020 qualification slots in addition to the slots already available for 2021. Ironman did not say how they will decide how qualifiers will pick between the two years. All of this, of course, assumes that racing across the world resumes by Aug. 30.

Any race that has been rescheduled to after Aug. 30 will qualify for the 2021 Ironman World Championship.

Additionally, the Legacy Program has been allocated additional slots for 2020, providing every eligible waitlisted Legacy athlete the ability to race this year. That means any athlete who has completed 12 full-distance, Ironman-branded races—and has never competed in Kona—will be able to register.

In terms of pros, the qualifying date has also been pushed back to Aug. 30. In an email to pro athletes, Ironman wrote that they “are in the process of giving thoughtful consideration to the redistribution of pro qualifying slots.”