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According to Ironman Cozumel, there will be more than 25,000 full Ironman finishers…this year! Given Ironman started in 1978, and the numbers increased every year, we could conservatively say there are 100,000 Ironman triathletes. There are 23 Ironman races each year. Each has thousands of entries. (I didn’t know this. I thought each race would have 40 or 50 entries).

The most recent figure from both CSA & CS&PF of Channel solo swimmers, to the end of swim season 2009, is…1081. We might add, maybe 40 or 50 this year?

100:1

So I got curious and did some checking with a friend. And we came up with a figure. There are at least 225,000 IM successful triathletes in the world. Kona alone, the original location, and the world championships has 36,000. So the ratio is even greater. And I couldn’t pull numbers for South Africa, France, one of the Australian IMs, Austria, Brazil since 2004.

So the number must be around 250,00. But we’ll stay at the minimum.

225:1

Ironman triathletes to EC Channel swimmers. And the NC ratio is a factor of 10 greater again!