Marathons. Cycling Races. Triathlons. So many have been wiped out, but organizers are already planning how to bring them back.
July 1. That’s the date Joe De Sena has circled on his calendar. It’s when the chief executive of Spartan, the endurance and obstacle race company, believes he will again be gathering thousands of people to crawl under barbed wire, scale hills of mud, swim through icy water and jump over fire.
“We are tribal creatures,” De Sena said from his farm in central Vermont, where he has been sheltering in place with 20 family members for the past month. “We’re not going to live our lives hiding from each other behind our couches.”
In the endurance-sports world, De Sena may be the biggest optimist out there, because at this moment, even with disease curves flattening, it can be hard to imagine thousands of people massing together on a start line, drinking from communal fluid stations and huffing through a grueling racecourse.
In March, De Sena furloughed 75 percent of his staff of about 400 and cut the pay of those who remained, to help ease the pain of losing $9 million in profits. Now, he and other race organizers are starting to imagine life on the other side of Covid-19, becoming some of the first people in sports to actively plan for the next normal.
“Once we get out of this, what is the product going to look like?” said Dave McGillivray, the race director for the Boston Marathon, which was supposed to take place Monday, and dozens of other races organized by his company. “Is it going to change temporarily or forever?”
Some 5,000 road races, roughly 775 cycling events and more than 250 multisport events (triathlons and duathlons) will not happen this spring. Athletes have cabin fever, and racing directors and event companies are juggling a series of bad alternatives that are producing financial losses and angry customers in the short term, and that could cannibalize the industry come fall.
“I don’t think events like ours will go back anytime soon,” said Carrie Panek, an owner of Koz Events, which owns and manages 15 races in the San Diego area.
Koz Events — which Panek runs with her husband, Tobias — recently laid off all five employees, including the Paneks so they could collect unemployment. New race registrations and revenue have gone to zero. Rescheduling for later in the year has its own problems. There is already an endurance event scheduled for nearly every weekend in San Diego County, but Carrie Panek is determined to find a way to hold races that meet health guidelines. The events may be smaller, and not have the same thrill of a crushing horde on the start line, but she insists they are going to happen. “We’re going to figure out a way to survive,” she said.
The economics of the endurance-event business make a pandemic particularly problematic. Registration fees produce as much as 80 percent of revenues, and 80 to 90 percent of that money is spent on expenses weeks and months in advance of race day, including purchases of medals, T-shirts and permits. A canceled race owned by a mom-and-pop business that has to issue refunds or deferrals can sink the event or the business, said Rich Harshberger, the chief executive at Running U.S.A., an industry trade group.
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