I see your point, but that’s not it. You see, there are many ways I could’ve make the day more challenging: take only one gel like Dan Plews although I have training on a full carbohydrate regime; not ride my TT bike although I’ve training full time on it; swim the 3.8 km butterfly instead of freestyle… etc. But I am a competitor. A triathlon competitor. I train for and do triathlons. Other things no.
Think of Kipchoge, that 10 minutes before the start of the Berlin Marathon they change the race to a 3km steeplechase race… just to make it more “challenging”. Or that to Kilian Jornet, right before the Mont Blanc UTM, they change the race to a flat 30km run… no doubt more challenging for him as it is not his specialty. I can give you many examples and I am sure you can think of many more also. So the point was not to make the ironman distance “more” challenging. It was just to make it a true ironman. Nothing more. Nothing less. Other race formats are that, “other” races. Not a triathlon. Not an ironman. And the whole issue comes here because the ocean conditions were not a true reason to cancel the swim. Any one that was there that morning could agree on that. Of course, if you are not a swimmer or if you don’t care about triathlons, you would be very happy for not having to swim. But if you train for an ironman with an open water swim leg, a little choppy waters shouldn’t put your life at risk. We are talking that there was no hurricane or storm. Or a huge swell. The “strong current” excuse is unsustainable and unbelievable, because most of us there swam the days before, with much more worse conditions, and nothing happened.
What happened in Cozumel was not an ironman triathlon, was a carnival parade. And if you were there, you know what I’m talking about.
Cheers.