the female winner does not go to the worlds it would appear, i guess she did the numbers game to see how competitive she would be and decided against it . pure speculation of course.

at the end of the day there is no right or wrong and different people come to different conclusions, so all good.

Great question.

The entire process. More so R5 but brought on by the organizer’s allowing the athlete to make the decision at all.

Shade meaning cloud over the result. Not that she is suddenly a bad person.

Thank you. That's enough for me lol.

Remember Arthur Horseau won Lanzarote (pretty sure) and missed the awards rolldown due to either a language barrier, a shuttle delay or celebrating too hard, or some combination. IM eventually gave him the slot to Nice, but for a while they were not going to. They go over it in the pre race meetings too. If IM thinks Cecilia should go, I am sure they could give her a slot. It's not going to be 90 women down in Taupo haha.

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Agree. That's on athlete 4. Still sucks but that's one of those rules literally everyone knows. I was at a race one year where they moved the awards ceremony due to weather but didn't communicate it well. A Mpro missed his slot for worlds because he was in the other location, and then still only showed up like 45 seconds late. They didn't budge even there.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
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Seeing how much this happens the rule is kind of silly. I get it 29yrs ago but we all have email, cell phones, etc. they could easily provide a time period to respond electronically.

Not to mention the FOMO of it all. That trip to NZ is going to be a $10k+ weekend, it would be $20k for my family. But you have seconds to decide. Perhaps people would prefer more thought.

Replying in general, but having worked south of the border for many years none of this is very surprising. Logistical nightmares are extremely commonplace down there, it's just the way things are. I wouldn't even be surprised if volunteers were handing out hot sauce at aid stations.

If it was a dude who did it he would be getting tore apart for this.

I would be all for a trip down south if they were handing out mini tacos at aid stations! I might need a few porta potty stops though....

Hard to tell from all the different recollections and stories of what 4th experienced, but aside from all that, a great chance for ironman to come in and be the white knight here. They did it last year but didnt really get the props because it felt like they were forced into it and finally caved. Just come in and make it right for 4th, take the win ironman!!!! Dont wait for some social media pressure to do the right thing, you dont get this opportunity too often, and when you do you usually fuck it up....

That's how the Challenge Family does it, but I understand IM doesn't want to wait for months to know how many slots they have filled (and that's how long the Challenge process takes, since every roll down means there is a couple more weeks for the next athlete on the list to register or ignore the e-mail). Also IM want to get paid right there and then. If they can afford to put pressure on people, why shouldn't they. Folks vote with their wallets.



Isn't there plenty of time to think before you've raced the qualification race?

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Great point. An opportunity for IM to make it right and offer 4 a slot. They don’t even have to take away 5th. They are partly to blame here after all


Regarding Mexico, I’ve raced in Cabo. It’s a good experience but not on the same level as a 🇺🇸 race. Seems to be a franchised version of IM. So perhaps 🇺🇸 Im hands are tied.

This. You should know if you want to go for sure prior. It shouldn't be a see if you can scramble the money situation...lol

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Glad shady was taken out of the headline but disagree with the rest of this. Dk what male to female gap has to do with anything. There are way more male triathletes in this sport. Just look at the Oceanside start list. The slots are & should be equal. Hopefully more women start triathlon younger & races continue to build depth. But it's not that out of the realm of possibility to see a gap like this. T100 winners were 18min apart, & those are top athletes. Chelsea Sodaro won 70.3 Tasmania & was 25min off of the men's winner. Again, another big name there. This wasn't an IM Pro Series race. It had a $20k prize purse and they only have one tier under that. The men's winner is also an emerging athlete, after putting together a really solid season last year. The top-2 men were a lot better on paper than everyone else in both fields. The winner's gap to the 3rd place men's finisher comes pretty close to the Sodaro gap. Bottom line is if someone wanted a slot there was nothing keeping them from entering this race. Gross conditions slowed things down across the board.

From looking at some of the videos of this race, there's a lot more to be concerned with than the roll down. Looked like pros crashed on the bike because of athletes riding at them.

It's surely 100% within the letter of the rules, but seems to be outside the spirit of the rules. It's not that 1st/2nd/3rd/4th didn't earn a spot, it's that they didn't follow IM's ridiculous and predatory policy.

The spirit of this particular rule though seems to be maximizing cash-in-hand for the IM organization. Take people at their most excited, coming off a peak performance, you're only allowed to go to the EXCLUSIVE EVENT if you pay for it RIGHT NOW! Don't wait! You'll lose your spot!

The whole system has timeshare sales pitch vibes. They're one step removed from having a credit card swipe at the finish line.

They've got everyone's email address. I know because I get 17 emails a day from them. How about you have 10 days after the event to claim your slot?

Pros actually don't even have to pay on the spot for world champs.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
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if you are saying that a race that race that awards pro slots for worlds should have a certain strength of field or price money level i would not disagree with your point . i hope its ok that i reverse engineer your argument, and it does not have to be a top level race but lets say at least 1 tier up.

and i also agree the male winner is an emerging talent but not yet to no 1 in the world but i think we can agree that his perofrmacne was a good bit better than 2rth or 5 place female. with winner female you could argue she just did enough to win.
but again if you say there should be a certain price money level attached to a world champ slot i agree with you.

at the same time its great that ironman has development pro races they are very important to get to the next level. like continental cups are very important in short course.

I mean we've got someone complaining on the Oceanside thread about mid-pack pros & races like this one (races set up for mid pack pros) seem to be disappearing from the calendar. Now we've got people over here asking if worlds slots should be given out to women at this race. I'm saying the strength of the women's field here was fine & that they deserve their slots. I think the men's winner was a bit of an anomaly at a race like this. I have no issue at all with the women's race. Maybe 1st did race to win &, if so, then what does a time gap matter. Pro racing doesn't have to just be one big time trial for every athlete. Long course racing can be a lot of fun when people are still racing close to the finish line. Races like this are huge for athletes to pick up prize money, experience, and world championship slots.

If you're a pro, I would suspect that you you generally know if you're going to accept a slot to the WC well in advance - even if its a relative long-shot.

For an age grouper, way down the list and it rolls it might be a different story.

If I got a 70.3 slot like this (I will not, not a good enough pro) I'd give it to 4th, if they gave me that option. That's a question I have, can she even do that after signing the paper??

However, this is not my career. It's something I'm doing for "fun" on the side of a full time job and being a dad, so I get how it could be different for someone that needs this for sponsors, growth, money, whatever.

I didn't think there is a "bad guy" in this case. Just unfortunate. And IM has a change to be the "good guy" by diffusing the whole thing with an extra slot for 4th. Here's hoping.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

Regardless of where you stood on this - Congrats to Cecilia Perez, athlete #4 who won 70.3 Peru (with one slot on offer) and got her slot to Taupo. Extremely solid race. Anyways - all is right in the world!

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Fantastic