Wlaf1450Campbell County native Joey Hicks heads to Spain for 8th Ironman World Championship
A NOTE FROM THE GRAND ON CENTRAL: “There is so much good going on in our community, and I want to share all this good with you every Monday here on WLAF in hopes that you will start your week in a grand way making each week a Grand Week,” said Olivia Lobertini, owner of The Grand on Central.
By Charlotte Underwood
JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- Campbell County native Joey Hicks is preparing to compete in the Ironman 70.3 World Championship in Marbella, Spain, on November 9. This will be his 8th IronMan World Champion competition. He, along with some of the other best athletes in the world, will test their endurance with a swim in the Mediterranean, a mountainous run and cycle event.
Being from Campbell County, Hicks should feel right at home competing in mountainous terrain.
Hicks, his wife Kimberly and their youngest son Braden will travel to Spain and then also do some additional traveling in Eastern Europe after the race. Hicks’ son is fluent in Spanish and will act as a translator for Hicks.
A full Ironman competition consists of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112-mile bike, and a 26.2-mile run (140.6 total miles). A half Ironman cuts the distance of each portion in half.
Hicks loves competing in these tests of endurance and competes in multiple competitions each year. In order to compete in the World Championship, you have to do a qualifying race each year. For this world championship, he actually qualified twice, once at an Ironman competition in Santa Cruz, California, last September, and again at an Ironman held in Chattanooga in May of this year.
There are IM events across the world and those who are at the top of their age group get an option to attend the World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.
“It’s a great honor to compete in the world championships,” Hicks said. He has been pushing himself with “a lot of exercise” to train and get ready for his next competition.
This has included a lot of extra weight training to prepare his body for a much more difficult race.
“World Championships are always the hardest event of the year. They make them really hard, with lots of climbing, typically a hard swim and the competition are usually much more difficult than the average 70.3 competitions,” Hicks said.
The swim part of this particular Ironman will be hard since it is in the ocean and is expected to “be choppy and hard.”
“These competitions are set up where it is you against the elements and the swim is going to be the hardest part of this one for me,” Hicks said.
During the swimming portion of the competition, there will be about 75 volunteers on the water in boats, kayaks and paddle boards to watch out for the swimmers for safety purposes.
The average temperature of the water will be about 61 degrees, necessitating wetsuits for the competitors for warmth.
Hicks is a 1987 graduate from Campbell County High School, and he has always had been an athlete, playing basketball and running track in high school. After his residency in orthodontics, he began racing bikes and did that for 15 years. In the winter, he would run local 5K and 10K events and put away the bike until March. When he started winning and doing well in running, his wife made the comment that he should learn to swim, and he could do a triathlon. Laughingly, he said sure. He did his first “sprint” triathlon the next summer in 2014. He did very poorly in the swim (one of the last out of the water) but had a great bike and run, he came in third overall.
Hicks enjoyed his first triathlon so much he asked his wife what the hardest triathlon is, she laughed and said an IronMan. So, he decided to compete in one. A year later, in Oct 2015, he competed in his first IronMan in Maryland and completed it in under 11 hours.
Hicks said he is excited for the upcoming event and has been training every day. He trains two times a day, doing a combination of swimming, biking and running.
To date, he has competed all across the United States including California, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Maryland, Indiana, Hawaii and more. But he has also traveled overseas to compete in St. Lucia, Spain, and several summers ago he competed in Germany (which is where he qualified for the world championship). In 2018 he traveled to South Africa to compete in the half IronMan World Championship.
A NOTE FROM THE GRAND ON CENTRAL: “There is so much good going on in our community, and I want to share all this good with you every Monday here on WLAF in hopes that you will start your week in a grand way making each week a Grand Week,” said Olivia Lobertini, owner of The Grand on Central.
For bookings, email Olivia Lobertini at ohlobertini03@gmail.com. Check on avails HERE. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-10/20/2025-6AM)
Good luck. Go Joey❗️