Ironman had been teasing an upcoming reveal, and today it was announced: Woven, an exciting new Ironman-founded initiative specifically focused on supporting the growth of women’s participation in Ironman events – and, in turn, triathlon more broadly.

Anytime an organization takes the time to meaningfully engage with participants, solicit their feedback, and then actively evolve its model in response, we believe that’s something worth celebrating. And that’s exactly what Ironman has done here.

The research informing Woven included feedback from 10,000 women in endurance sports, with the goal of better understanding both the barriers to and enablers of participation, and the steps Ironman could take to help more women enter and remain in the sport.

For some added context, when Ironman announced the return of a single-day Ironman World Championship in Kona for 2026, there was considerable discussion around the allocation of qualifying slots between women and men. Separating the World Championship between Nice and Kona had temporarily allowed for equal fields, but the Kona pier is naturally constrained. Ironman’s initially proposed qualification model relied on a performance pool, based on the premise that the athletes whose performances most merited qualification (with performance adjusted for age and gender) would earn the available slots.

At the time, Women in Tri UK estimated that the proposed model could result in only 17% of Kona slots going to women.

Following advocacy from various groups, Ironman revisited its model (and we commend them for doing so), establishing separate performance pools for women and men. The change meant that the significantly larger number of male participants, including highly competitive male age-group athletes, would not in turn reduce the availability of World Championship slots for women.

It represented an important recognition of a broader challenge: women continue to face barriers to participation in endurance sport that can affect not only who reaches a World Championship start line, but who enters and remains in the sport in the first place. And Woven could be viewed as the next step.

Rather than addressing representation only at the qualification end of the pathway, Ironman is now looking further upstream: deliberately investing in understanding and reducing the barriers that affect women’s participation and creating more opportunities for women to enter, remain in, and progress through the sport. Ultimately, the vision is to help create the conditions for more women to participate across Ironman events – and, over time, for the number of women reaching the World Championship start line to continue to grow.

Feedback from the Women Engaged

Across the feedback gathered from 10,000 women, several key themes emerged.

First, visibility and representation matter. 40% of endurance athletes surveyed identified increasing visibility as the most important factor in growing women’s participation, while 50% of women said they consume endurance sport content daily but would like to see more content focused on women.

Beyond visibility, belonging and social connection also ranked highly as factors that can support participation. 71% of women said they would prefer to train with others, despite a significant proportion currently training alone.

There are also seemingly simple amenities that can meaningfully affect women’s experiences at events. Access to period products (Ironman events are long races!), lactation facilities for those with young children, private changing areas, and other practical considerations were all identified as opportunities to make the race experience more supportive and accessible.

The feedback extended well beyond these examples, but they highlight some of the central themes that emerged – and, importantly, areas Ironman has directly designed Woven to address.

What Woven Will Offer

Woven is built around three strategic pillars: increasing women’s visibility and representation through content, imagery, staffing, and storytelling; improving the event experience for women; and building a supportive, “always-on” global community for women in triathlon, with both online and in-person components.

Membership in Woven is free, and the initiative is intended to provide an open and welcoming space for women at all levels, from the tri-curious to experienced athletes.

Member benefits will include online forums, educational content, ambassadors, and curated experiences. There will be a members-only Strava community, webinars, exclusive events, clubhouse amenities, and priority opportunities at select Ironman 70.3 events designated as Start Line Project events. Woven will also launch with 36 ambassadors globally, including seven experts and 29 “everyday athletes” who put themselves forward and were selected by Ironman to help lead, connect, and inspire the community.

And how will Ironman measure success? The organization hopes to see more women on its start lines, women reporting a greater sense of belonging and visibility at events, and Woven itself continuing to grow and evolve through future iterations as ongoing feedback is received.

That last piece feels particularly important. After all, the initiative began by listening directly to women about what would make the sport more welcoming and accessible to them. Continuing that feedback loop will help determine how effectively Woven translates those findings into meaningful change.

For now, we’re looking forward to seeing the first elements of Woven come to life on the ground in Kona, with more reporting to come live from the Big Island!