Ironman CEO to Retire

From the official press release:

After 12 years of transformative leadership, Andrew Messick has announced he will be retiring in 2023 from his position of President & Chief Executive Officer for The IRONMAN Group. Messick will remain a stakeholder and member of the Board of Directors following the recruitment and appointment of a new CEO.

First off: congrats on the retirement.

Second: it will be very interesting to see who takes over and how this will shape the UTMB/Ironman partnership going forward.

Finally: An interesting tidbit from the “milestones” section of the press release that is trail running related:

…groundbreaking partnership with UTMB that resulted in the creation of the UTMB World Series, the world’s most important series of ultra trail running events. We now have 16 trail running events in our portfolio across Europe, Oceania, Africa and North America and believe passionately in the future of trail running…

If I parse this correctly, then of the 36 locations only 16 are officially owned by Ironman. The 36 includes UTMB in Chamonix and Western States which are off the table for obvious reasons, but this also indicates that even many (most) of the other events on their global calendar aren’t ‘owned’ outright by Ironman… yet. I have yet to find any official statement on how the partnership with these other races are structured.