With the groundswell of opinion from the community on this recent issue, and the ongoing international media requests coming our way, there seems to be demand for further comment from us on this recent Vail Resorts – Ironman announcement for Whistler. Unfortunately on this end however, we’re basically two guys putting on events, without a C-suite of executives and a PR team to lean on. Yes, it’s the ‘off season’ for race directors, but that just means life has a slightly more predicable pace while we put all the plans in place for the next season of events, preparing for registrations opening, which in our case is all happening in the coming weeks here. So as a small business duo, we simply do not have the bandwidth necessary to wade any further into this situation at this time, which just feels like spinning tires (or trail shoes) in the mud at this point now anyways.
*fyi to those who don’t know, we produce six races a year currently, soon to be seven of course*
Recent comments and stories in select media have provided cleanly crafted versions of the other side of the story. We do not feel the need to take this any further and have a PR duel in the town square. The situation is as clear as it’s going to get, and runners already understand this without us needing to add any more fuel to the fire. It’s just all very disheartening in the end, and the people who lose out the most are the local trail running community.
For those of you who might not know my business partner Geoff Langford, he’s been in the events industry for 25 years now. Geoff used to operate within the adventure racing space and produced the Adventure Racing World Championships two decades ago. Together we’ve also worked with Red Bull, Spartan, and other large scale event productions over the years. I honestly do not know anyone with more event permitting experience than him, and this is not our first rodeo, though it is very much our first experience with being caught up in a dust storm with two massive corporate entities. We’ve always worked hard to establish solid working relationships with community stakeholders, trail organizations, sponsors, and land managers, and in fact numerous stakeholders who we’ve worked with previously in the region have reached out recently to support us and express that they share in our disappointment with this recent announcement.
We as a tandem here need to shift our focus back to the work we love, which is preparing another season of the best events possible, for the communities we operate in, and the runners and volunteers who attend them. And of course there’s also that whole looming 10 week deadline to get a new race off the ground now too lol.
We have said all that we feel is necessary. We cannot know what happened behind closed doors over recent months, and maybe more, but just the fact that all of those involved on the other side had all our contact details, yet we were somehow kept completely out of the loop until a few hours before they went live tells us absolutely everything we all need to know here.
Geoff and I want to take this time to say thank you for all the incredible outpouring of support and encouragement. It’s been truly uplifting and overwhelming to see this coming in from trail runners around the globe. My suggestion for now would be to get out for a run and pump some good vibes into your veins, and come race season, you do you and go and vote with your hard-earned dollars.
And finally, this is all I keep coming back to in my head since this was announced, “When people (or businesses or corporations) show you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they really are.” Maya Angelou
Sincerely,
Gary Robbins and Geoff Langford
Coast Mountain Trail Running