Good news for those that like to draft. I just think IM Texas is a poor choice of all the North American IMs to get 45 extra slots given its history of large draft packs.

It's been a toss up between it and Mont Tremblant for the North American championships, and I believe they've erred on TX simply because it happens earlier in the year.

This is why St George should always be a full. But that's me talking.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

the race will be MUCH more fair for the women, because they'll only have a sliver of the number of men on the course, and more women will have the opportunity to qualify. this is a win all the way around.

there are some problems however. one is IM's problem: having enough volunteers. the other is our problem: a lot more folks on the island, which means the prices go up on everything. i've been urging IM to run free shuttles, often, from waikoloa to downtown kona, during those 2 weeks. the only way to fit everyone on the island, and deal with a discrete limit of rental cars on the island, is to make waikoloa a reasonable alternative. that means:

1. running shuttles back and forth, every 30min or so, with a way to get bikes back and forth, to/from waikoloa.
2. hold an suite of events in waikoloa leading up to the races, so that waikoloa isn't just a bedroom community. you have to bring some of the event to waikoloa.
3. make some of the procedural stuff occur in waikoloa. perhaps allow for remote registration.

if you make it a worthwhile experience to stay in waikoloa for the IM, that will help the 2-race-day format work well for everyone.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

They needed to spread the womens slots out evenly maybe 20 womens slots every race not say 100 at one race and none at the next. And they have over done it, maybe have more everyone slots and about half the quantity of female only.

It will be tough as a male to see a female who finishes 15 out of 25 starters finishing 3 hours behind the AG winner get a slot while men finishing in 5th place only 15 mins back from their Age Group winner miss out.

Its great to see more normal slots as it was getting almost too hard to qualify.

Another option would also be making some slots just for first timers to kona so some new faces get a chance rather then the repeat offenders.

Or also how about making legacy lower perhaps 8 races, and recognising those athletes in order to boost numbers, there would be a lot of women on that basket who have not done Kona also.

Start with the Slowtwitch Kona Party!

As a Legacy entrant, this year (2022) will likely be my only time to do the race. By the time I really started to look for accommodations (about 6 months ago), Waikoloa was the only reasonable alternative in terms of cost. I didn't want to pay $500/night during race week for a place in town that will rent for $125/night any other time of the year.

I suspect that next year, prices in Waikoloa will creep up as well. So far, I haven't heard any stories of Vrbo/AirBnB cancellations and re-bookings at a higher price for places in Waikoloa........

(I did get lucky and found direct flight round trip airfare LAX to KOA for $300 :)...but rental cars are so expensive)

Taking this further, have the men race an event centered at Waikoloa and the women out of Kona. And rotate that between the years. Honu 70.3 is in Waikoloa and just double up that course (two loops of each....albeit maybe a different run course that just sticks to the road shoulder out to QueenK and back 2 loops). Or you can run the bike course from Waikoloa to Kona back to Hawi, back to Waikoloa.

One gender gets the traditional Kona course, one gender gets the Honu course. Then both venues get fully used.

Or maybe I don't care since I have raced the original Kona course and if I do an Ironman in Kona again (a gigantic iffffffff) I could care less which course thy put me on. But notionally that solves the accommodation problem by making Waikoloa area a viable location to stay with an event that is going on there.

I thought one solution is that if you race kona this year, you don't get to race for 4 more years (basically you get one trip inside each age group that you age into). This would allow for more new blood at the race every year, and the reason this is important for Ironman is because the more people who get to Kona, they come home and inspire more others to go so it becomes a virtuous cycle. The same person who goes 8 times in 10 years can only inspire so many.

Personally I am OK when women finishing further from their age group winner getting a slot, because inherently being a woman and doing this sport is much harder than for males. I can go for a run in the woods, in the dark, in strange cities, any time I want, but my sister or wife can't. And many women I know literally will not hit the road solo and 95% of my lifetime miles are solo. Men can get to the start line of every workout more easily than women. Societal barriers are lower for us, so even though on the surface we may think the women's field is less dense, a big part of the competition being a woman triathlete is getting to the start line of each workout and if you can't get to those workout start lines because of societal barriers, the depth of field will be different than for males. So generally I support any move to make womens' sport more accessible and to me that includes Kona slots

Perhaps texas is the NA championship?

IN some of these events we will see 55 slots for everyone and 100 for women, so that will be an allocation of 35 for males and 120 for females. In most race female participation is around 30%. Can anyone else see this is a bit of an over compenstion!

I think a reasonable amount of women in tri slots is ok, but why does it have to be a female race day and a male race day? Lets mix it up on both days.

Ironman you have lost me, I am doing Kona this year then I am done, I'm going to do some bucket list race like Roth and Alcatraz, I might try do some ITU worlds even, they have never meant much to me as too easy to qualify for, but hey why not now.. My achievement battling to qualify 2 x for kona is now diminished. PTO is talking up a 200km championship, that might be cool, but for me Ironman is now a joke. I agree that it was getting too hard to qualify and more slots is great, but you have got this wrong with just how easy this now will be for Females in the sport v the challenge for Males.

$500.00 seems like a bargain, I just paid $670.00/night for an apartment in Lake Placid for 2023

And lake placid is a way better course than Kona IMO.

I doubt that increasing the number of Kona spots changes the experience the race itself, but it does detract from the accomplishment. Among my triathlete friends and acquaintances, only a couple have qualified for Kona. On the other hand, I’m constantly meeting someone who has done a 70.3 WC. So while I’m happy for the extra people that will get to do Kona, I do feel like the expansion takes something away from the whole thing. .

I don't think it does. We probably have 5x the number of people doing the sport worldwide versus 1992 (20 years ago) so just because there are more slots now does not reduce Mark Allan or PNFs accomplishment when in theory it was easier to get to Kona relative to overall global field which is larger now....so why not more slots?

I agree, the slot difficultness has become way too hard v the early years as way more people do the sport. It is more the amount of slots for females now is a bit too high, I think the total number of slots is ok, but we have 30% of participants worldwide being female having access to 50% of slots and the 70% male having access to the other 50%. I understand we can adjust things to support women into IRONMAN but this is just a little too far.

I hate to break this to you, but...

I'm missing something then....So we are worried about women participation numbers in Kona but at the same time expecting Kona slots to roll through an entire age group?

You misunderstand the point.

They are moving the additional women's slots to the events where it makes sense to do so based on a combination of factors, including but not limited to: ability to fill the Kona field; historic female participation levels at that event; and whether that event is already sold out for 2022 or 2023.

Ultimately it's about having roughly the same number of slots for both men and women, regardless of participation volume. It brings Kona in line with say, Boston, in terms of its qualification standards for men and women.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Simple algebra:

If women have been 33% of the Kona field, then male participation will increase by 50%, and female participation will increase by 200%.

As a male, I really don’t care how many women get to compete on Thursday, although as a person booking a hotel room, rental car, etc., it does come at a cost.

Haha I missed a decade. I must be feeling 46 today rather than 56 lol

Yup. Which is why it's critical that there's infrastructure developed to help ensure people can stay in many locations. There's finite resources at play here.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

About a week ago a lot of surprised and very happy Legacy athletes received invites to the 2023 race. Many of them had only reached the 12 races recently and were not expecting to race until 2024/2025. There must be more Legacy slots now.

Still significantly more selective than Boston.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I think you’re actually onto something with the cruise ship idea. My kids would dig that. Just have boats ferrying people to and from shore.

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It seemed like a good idea at the time. . .

Standards aren’t the same if some races have 120 spots for women, and other races have 20. I’m not following the reasoning of why adding 30 extra spots to every race would lead to them rolling through all the age groups, but adding 100 extra spots won’t lead to the same thing. Dividing them between all eligible races would lead to 3ish extra slots per AG vs 10ish extra spots per AG if they only go to select races. Regarding historic women participation in the race, I assume that means races with more women get the extra spots? If that is the case I’m surprised by some of the selections and some of the races left out.