From its high-speed Internet to the frenzied competition to win the online voting as Outside Magazine's best outdoor city in America, Chattanooga doesn't move slowly anymore. Now there's yet another example of the Scenic City becoming the Speedy City.
Tuesday afternoon, the Ironman organization announced that Chattanooga is one of three finalists to host the 2017 Ironman 70.3 World Championships. Lake Placid, N.Y., and St. George, Utah, are the other finalists for the event when it returns to North America as part of the event's rotation to different parts of the world.
Professional triathletes Leon Griffin #4, Andy Potts #1 and Bozzone Terenzo #2 crest the Veteran's Bridge while running the first lap of the run course during the inaugural Sunbelt Bakery Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga race on Sunday, May 17, 2015. U.S. athlete Andy Potts won the race with a final time of 3:49:43. "Success breeds success," said Tim Morgan, president of the Chattanooga Sports Committee. "The way the community embraced the full (Ironman) and the way the community embraced the (recent) 70.3 put us in a position to be a finalist for this international world championship."
The 70.3 world finals would be added that year to the 140.6-mile Ironman in late September and the existing 70.3-miler in May. It probably would be held in August or early September.
In less than a year, Chattanooga has gone from a city that had no experience putting together an Ironman triathlon to potentially the host site of one of the sport's most high-profile events globally. Chattanooga hosted its first Ironman event with last fall's full Little Debbie Ironman Chattanooga and followed that up with the Sunbelt Bakery Ironman Chattanooga 70.3 earlier this month.
The success of those events and the response of the community have put Chattanooga in this position to be a finalist alongside cities with much longer histories of hosting Ironman events.
"Like any smart business, they listen to the people who are purchasing their product -- the athletes," Morgan said of Ironman. "The athletes themselves -- both pro and amateur -- were raving about our community and the experience they had within our community.
"From the hospitality network here to all sorts of different businesses, it's been pretty positive. For us to overcome some of the challenges that we've faced and to approach it as a team, Ironman has recognized that."
Florida resident Elvie Smith #951 shifts gears while riding the bike course of the inaugural Sunbelt Bakery Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga race on Sunday, May 17, 2015.The Ironman 70.3 World Championships -- held in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada, last year -- will be held in Zell am See-Kaprun, Austria, in August of this year and move to Queensland, Australia, in 2016.
With about 4,500 athletes expected to qualify to compete, the 2017 event will be a two-day affair with professional women and age-group women racing on one day and professional men and age-group men racing on the other. This will be the first time that an Ironman event will feature separate men's and women's races.
"We are focused on providing more opportunities for women to race with us globally," Ironman CEO Andrew Messick said in a released statement. "After consulting with members of our Women For Tri Board, we felt that having a separate race for female professional and age group athletes would be a strong step forward for our sport."
One of the women hoping to compete in the 2017 event is local pro triathlete Anna Cleaver. The New Zealand native hopes to qualify and race for a world title in her adopted hometown and said the exposure of being selected would be amazing for the city.
"To bring this to the city I think would raise huge awareness for how great Chattanooga is," she said. "It's more than just bringing people to see how great Chattanooga is and its mountains. But it benefits so much more. It benefits local attractions, local hotels.
"I think I'm evidence of what this town does and how it attracts people. I visited and fell in love with it."
For now, all local organizers can do is wait for Ironman's decision, expected to come sometime in late summer, and do what they can to show that Chattanooga is ready for an event of this magnitude.
Local athlete Kim Humphries #271 removes her cap while exiting the swim portion of the the inaugural Sunbelt Bakery Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga race on Sunday, May 17, 2015."The ball's in their court," Morgan said. "We're kind of playing a waiting game right now, honestly. We maintain communication with them, and any questions that they have we immediately address.
"We're not just sitting on our hands on this, but we are being respectful of the process."
Chattanooga is up against tough competition. Lake Placid has hosted two Winter Olympic Games and will host its 17th Ironman in July, the longest-running Ironman event in the continental United States. St. George currently is the host city for the Ironman 70.3 North American Pro Championship and has hosted Ironman events since 2010.
But Chattanooga has a long history of playing the underdog role, and the success of its first year on the Ironman scene has pushed it quickly to the forefront of the triathlon world.
"Out of races I've run all around the world, these are the best-run races," Cleaver said of her experience in Chattanooga's two Ironman events. "Without a doubt that has an influence.
"(Chattanooga) doesn't have the history behind it that the other locations have, so that says something that after one Ironman and one 70.3 it's already on the radar to be a world championship location."
Contact Jim Tanner at JFTanner@bellsouth.net. Follow him at twitter.com/JFTanner.