For some of you guys who have already been following my blog, you may have seen my highly unscientific survey of height to weight ratios of male and female elite triathletes.  Since those blogs posts took random samples from across the sport, I didn’t think they really said much about specific height to weight ratios for Ironman and Olympic Distance triathlon.  I thought a much more interesting survey would be to take the men’s and women’s champions from Hawaii over the past ten years, and compare them to the men’s and women’s ITU Olympic Distance World Champions.  So here are the men, and I think this does make a fairly interesting comparison.  Surprisingly, Ironman athletes appear to be slightly taller and heavier than their Olympic Distance counterparts.  I would love to have people comment on this and possibly share some viewpoints on why this is the case.  Also, it would appear that if you want to find your ideal Ironman weight (at least according to the height to weight ratio that on average has been most successful over the past decade), you’d need to multiply your height in inches by 2.25.  I’m 6’2″, so in my case I’d multiply that by 2.25 to find that my ideal Ironman weight should be about 166 pounds.  So, four pounds to go before the season begins, then!

MEN’S IRONMAN HAWAII CHAMPIONS 2001-2010

Tim Deboom: 5’11”/155 lbs=2.18 pounds per inch of height

Peter Reid: 6’3”163 = 2.17

Normann Stadler: 5’11”/167=2.35

Faris al Sultan: 5’10”/158=2.26

Chris McCormack: 5’11”/171=2.41

Craig Alexander: 5’11”/150=2.11

Average: 2.25

MEN’S ITU OLYMPIC DISTANCE WORLD CHAMPIONS 2001-2010

Peter Robertson: 5’8”/132=1.94

Ivan Rana: 5’8”/135=1.99

Bevan Docherty: 6’2”/154=2.08

Tim Don: 5’8”/142=2.09

Daniel Unger:6’1”/165=2.32

Javier Gomez: 5’9”/151=2.19

Alistair Brownlee: 6’0”/154=2.20

Average: 2.12

*Please remember that this is for informational and entertainment use only!  All the information that I’ve listed here was found on the internet, which doesn’t necessarily guarantee its reliability.  I’ve only put this together as a fun project that I thought would be interesting to read about, please don’t go and do anything crazy to lose weight to get to your “ideal” height to weight ratio, as I don’t believe that there really is such a thing.  If you notice, there’s a pretty wide varience even between the pros.  Be smart, be healthy, and train happy.