Monty, they didn't say the same thing at all. Brian said, as I quoted, that the athlete will probably need to make a decision to break the rules to be competitive at the pointy end ("in that way"). Jonnyo said the opposite: it's not necessary to cheat through intentional drafting in order to win.

"That's not entirely true. In the M40-44 they did hand out some penalties to people in the pack and no one bothered to get out of the pack.
I don't understand why you guys bitch after every race. Yes I know I did that, often in fact, in the past. But now I realized WTC = new ITU for age groupers.

In the female 40-44 my athlete exited the water second took the lead on the bike and won her AG by :90 or :95. Since she was solo & off the front, at least she didn't have to worry about drafting in her AG.

As an athlete it sucks bc if you want to be competitive at some point you're going o have to choose to break the rules of not.

As a coach it sucks bc I'm forced to tell my athletes that any and every WTC race they do they will probably need to make a decision to break the rules if they want to be competitive. At least on the dudes side. "

but in our conversation I told her to expect something like this to happen and that she'd need to make a decision to do her own race and possibly sacrifice winning the AG and possibly not getting a 70.3 Worlds slot or getting into the group and risking taking the penalty.