jazzymusicman wrote:
is participation really up because of Nats? M30-34 was half the size of last year. Just curious why USAT cares if the bike course is 54 or 56 since 70.3 isn't an ITU thing (as evidenced by the WC being some odd 3/4th distance)?
I didn't say it is up; I am predicting it will go down when it loses the USAT Nat'l stamp. I think the year to year participation during this three year run is predicated on where worlds are. Apparently a lot more people were interested in going to Penticton since that is like going to another state. Move Worlds to Denmark and holy cow, a foreign country that speaks Danish!! Yeah, I know that virtually everyone in Scandanavia speaks fairly fluent English, but hey, it's far away, in Europe!
Re, 54 miles. It's supposed to be a HIM and regardless of the ITU 'Nice' distance, it's never been a HIM at 54, and could not be compared to any other HIM at 54. So if it wasn't done at USAT's prodding, why, after all these years did they finally add a 2 mile loop to bring it up to snuff? Surely it wasn't done to confuse the first elite who missed it and was DQ'd?