The question stands, though. Should a 41 year old who doesn’t win his AG at every race, be racing pro just because he managed to meet the criteria at sone random race? The criteria is too low.

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If that's the question then the title of this thread should be "is USATs Pro qualifying criteria too easy?"
If a 41 year old met the criteria and decided to take his pro card, I really could not care less. Someone's gotta be at the back. =)

Totally agree with your last few posts. Do people know that there are a # of countries where you don't even have to meet criteria to get a pro license? You can just register, pay the money, and compete as a pro. The US has depth. That's not a bad thing. What about the standard is too easy? You don't think a 106.22 score rating is tough? You don't think finishing top-3 age group at the biggest races in the US should get you your pro license? You don't think top-5 at AG Nats or top-10 at Kona should get the job done? Let's go through it point by point if it's too easy. If you're hitting any of the criteria, you're double dipping with the other criteria. Example: a top-5 at AG Nats/top-3 70.3 or 140.6 with a pro field will get you the score rating. Sometimes age group fields are deep & multiple people do well. I think a fair critique is that relying on mid pack data maybe isn't the best way to design the score rating. Usually bad weather races hand out the score rating like candy because the mid pack is off their game. But it works both ways. It can be harder to hit the score rating on good weather days on fast courses even with a blazing time because the mid pack wasn't off their game enough. Competitive athletes tend to flock to competitive races. So if you go to a race that draws a lot of serious athletes, scores can be driven down because the mid pack is a well trained mid pack. All of this is to say it's not perfect but it separates out athletes who have the potential to get to the highest level of the sport. It's wild to be complaining that < 100 pros at a 70.3 is too many. I think that's great. So many sports leagues are bigger. Just because there's no money in triathlon doesn't mean we can't have big pro fields. Hopefully prize money grows/expands. I've already said this. Let's find a way to pay 15/20/25 deep. Let's get more sponsors. Let's create more teams in daily training environments. Energy shouldn't be spent on the few pros who had off days that still would've been on an AG podium.

At the end of the day, I have zero issues with the mid pack pros trying to push themselves & finding out how much better they can get. Someone said they should be AG & learn how to win races but the races they would go to that had AG prize money have dried out. That's because IM got huge & put their races on the same weekends as local races. It is what it is but IM is basically the only ticket in town in the US for pros or aspiring pros. The person finishing 50th might be able to push themselves to a better time in a pro field than if they raced mostly solo in an AG race. Maybe back of pack pros would, you know, do better if they didn't need to work full-time. Oceanside paid 8 deep. That's a huge race. How do even the top pros make a living when 9th isn't getting paid there & 9th is still a really good athlete? Let's put our energy into stuff like that instead of focusing on the bottom 10-15% of a pro field. People in there have off days, they might self-select (or be forced) out of future pro fields, or they might get better. Let them figure it out.

A few glaring issues on the BOP pro debate:

-Ironman specifically but Tri in general doesn't care about pros. They do the nominal hat tip with ~$10k prize money at a few races, a rounding error of their profit margin. Just enough to grant legitimacy but not a penny more.

-Tri has been branded as a participation event, not a competition. To everybody outside of the sport finishing an Ironman is more impressive than a fast Olympic. This doesn't foster an environment of healthy competitiveness.

-There's no categories. Just AG and pro. Someone doing a 4:00 half can either get their pro card and be blasted or continue racing against Jane from HR fulfilling her New Year's resolution.

-The only people who care about pro triathlon is other triathletes. And the first thing they'll do is compare the pro's times to their times.

This made me LOL, go Jane!

But really there are 3 categories in IM racing. Pro, AG, and competitive AG. Ironman has a generous 5 deep podium, two by qualification AG “World Championships”, and AWA , albeit more of a frequent flyer program. So there is Jane and then there are gals and guys trying to make podiums or AG slots. And the 4 hour AG’er can opt to try and make a WC podium as an alternative to going pro and getting destroyed. That was my recommendation to the 41 year old guy, go try and podium at 70.3 Worlds as an accomplishment. I managed that once and I look back on that with a great deal of satisfaction, probably more so then if I took a pro card and got my ass kicked. I knew I wasn’t a “pro” even when I was faster.

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Ya, half the people I outrace are Janes from HR or Arnolds from Accounting. I hope they keep chasing their dreams! :)

I’m with you - I will never have that opportunity, but would take it if I did. Why not? Two friends, (one in college and one in…late 20s?) just took their elite licenses. Both are fairly new to the sport but coming in from strong single sport backgrounds, and both keep improving.

One did his first elite race this weekend, finishing mid-30s at Chattanooga 70.3. I don’t see the downside.

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Sorry but I just can’t agree.

A New Year’s resolution is all but a guarantee that you will NOT do the thing in question.

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Right but at what point does qualifying for Worlds not present much of a challenge for someone like this? You go & do 70.3 Worlds 5 years in a row & then think, hey, maybe I want to challenge myself in a different way. At some point you don't need to win every AG race & can give up a spot to someone else & challenge yourself as a pro. I mean, I laid out the standards & support them as being strong & would encourage people to understand that other countries have much weaker standards. Maybe 3 years is a lot of time if you're not cutting it but I think there's a natural adjustment period to learn how pro racing is stylistically different from AG racing. People are retiring every year/being forced out for not re-upping. The standards are designed to match that attrition. That's why the score rating has gotten more difficult. It's set up to make sure that there isn't an influx of new pros that doesn't match the previous year. Age groupers are getting better so the pro standard has gotten harder. Context matters. Part of the problem is that there's no real minor league system. WTCS racing has it. New pros race lower level races like Americas Cups, before moving up. In long course everyone just goes to Oceanside. I think the non Pro Series races are for developing pros. Folks should go to Maine and Augusta. But there aren't enough races to calendar like that so the bigger pro races have all of the top athletes + a number of minor league type athletes. It's fine. It's not hurting anyone.

dont turn down the 40 year old who got his pro license... let him try he earned it. If he doesnt perform there will be someone else to take that spot. (maybe 3 year rule is too generous). This makes other AG people dream big and still think they have a chance . That is the beauty of endurance sport.

Agreed. & I've said I think 3 years might be too long but I feel like people have made unfounded claims about what it takes to earn a pro license in the US. The standards are plenty challenging, have gotten more difficult every year since at least 2020/account for attrition, and a lot of other countries do not even have standards or have lighter standards in place. We should be asking about what is preventing people from maintaining the fitness that come them to their pro. Would it be easier if more people could actually be full-time pro triathletes & dedicate all of their time to their craft? People have jobs, families, etc. I'm not buying that pros are only the ones who can cut it in a sport. That's not our sport. There would be very few pros. Line up 8 people at Oceanside. Matt Hanson wasn't in the money there & won Chattanooga. I don't think we need to fixate on why the bottom 10-15% of a pro field had bad days. So many more people were competitive & so many more people are moving up in the sport from where they started from in their earlier pro races.

It gets weird because the pro license is optional. I can't imagine any Cat 1 cyclist being content winning local crits and never wanting to do more. Ditto for a 14:xx 5k guy. But somehow in triathlon we celebrate BOP pros winning AG events because they never took a pro license, then lambast those same BOP pros for having the audacity to take the license and not compete for the pro win.

As has been said, the lack of 'minor leagues' creates an awkward situation. You can't really force an overall AG winner to go pro, but you also can't stop some from sandbagging into a career full of AG wins. I come down more in favor of borderline cases going pro and struggling there as opposed to hanging back and sweeping up wins.

For example: The top AG finished 26th at IM Texas in 8:32. Far behind the leader, but 18 min behind the top 10. The middlemost MPRO was 8:56, 24min behind the winning AG. This guy finished in the TOP HALF of all MPRO's. A USAT results search shows consistent to 20-30 in Pro races and scores ~120. Maybe the pro entry is too soft, or maybe people aren't taking it. Should this person be allowed to continue winning AGs indefinitely?

When I got my license in 2018 I thought it would be really cool to have a pro race at every event but Tier them. Not all races have money so the Tier 1 races have money so I would do that race basically as an experience. Then you have Tier 2 races which might have some money but it is more for mid pack or BOP pros and they might have some points (back when that was a thing). Then Tier 3 races are for true BOP and 1st/2nd year pros. It would have allowed me to get a bit more comfortable with racing with other pros because I would know who I could race with rather than a race where I tried to latch onto Matt Russell's wheel out of the swim knowing that would last all of a minute. Would make it more fun for us BOP pros and would not impact anything else really.

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I only see it as a problem when 'real pros' can not get into a race like Texas when BOP athletes do. I think IM may implement rules for next year like ' pros who were in the top 20 in Kona or in the top 20 in the IM Pro Series will have slots allocated to them'. Arnaud Guilloux will have to go all the way to Cairns to race because he could not get a start in Texas. He was 12th at Nice WC, 4th the previous year in Texas and ranked 42th in the PTO so quite better than most of the field.

And I think that would be fine too. Almost like “race 2 tier 2 races before tier 1” or a show an AG result within X time of a pro win to show you can do a tier 1 race. I would’ve been fine doing that. But I also wasn’t traveling the world. Or sign up for a race then if it fills they only take too x number. Only issue with that was even though the pro director sent many reminders to send in a withdrawal to a race some didn’t which would mess that up.

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Yeah IM TX is a good example for everything you said. The top AGer is a pro. Who knows, they could have finished higher in the pro race & they definitely have the potential to work their way into top-10 finishes. The score rating was absolutely flawed at this race. I think 87 AGers hit the pro standard. That's way too many. Contrast that with 70.3 Oceanside, one of the most competitive AG races & only 15 athletes hit the pro standard there. Why? Because top results are thrown out for calculations which depend heavily on how the mid pack does at races. IRONMAN races tend to score higher than local races. So much more goes wrong in a full distance event for the mid pack so scores are driven up. So many more mid pack athletes might be here for a 1 time bucket list race & didn't put in a ton of training. Local races tend to have a dedicated group of weekend warriors who do their events so you really have to outperform to get a high score rating because the mid pack at those races are super consistent. I guarantee you plenty of AGers outside of the top-15 at Oceanside could have beaten people in the top-87 at Texas. It's also not fair to hand out pro licenses just because of poor race selection. 16th at Oceanside doesn't have a pro standard because they went to a race with good weather.

Remember a couple of things. Not everyone in the top-87 at Texas is from the US and you do have to hit the score rating twice so a lot of people at Texas probably won't do that & won't come close in their remaining races (also resets each year so your 1 score will expire when the calendar year turns). It balances itself out but I do think the formula relies too heavily on people having bad days. It's harder to get the pro rating at races on fast courses with good weather. It's right, imo, that Oceanside should've handed out more pro ratings & Texas less. But only the top-3 AG finishers are auto qualifiers at those races, provided they live in the US. Maybe you should have to prove it 3 times (4?) for the score rating or something like that but I still think the criteria is challenging/fair & that other countries don't even have stuff like this in place.

Agree with this too. IM caught their mistake after Oceanside/Texas & I don't think we've had a problem since with races filling up. I'm worried that the fields aren't capped by gender. I know there are less FPros but you could have races that are 90 men/10 women. It seems like if you sign up early you can get into the races you want. Part of the problem with this, however, is on pros (& front pack ones) who sign up & then no show. Would be nice is they had a system in place to have athletes commit before the race and then take people off of a waitlist.

I also agree that pros within a certain world ranking should be able to go to whatever Pro Series races they like. Use the standings list since you don't want to go off of PTO's rankings. Use your standings and say anyone within the top-50 will be accepted. Shouldn't be a problem with Race Ranger because of the natural # of no shows. But, again, maybe the problem is fixed by just signing up early. I'm also not totally against certain races being closed to pros not inside of a certain rank. Developing pros have the non-Pro Series races to choose from. They should go to Maine and Augusta this year, where competition will be closer to their level. Maybe base entry to top events based on Pro Series standings from the previous year & then getting a certain place at a non-Pro Series race. But all of that just adds layer after layer if there aren't real issues with advanced sign up.

The score rating was absolutely flawed at this race. I think 87 AGers hit the pro standard.//

You give a couple reasons why you think this is, but why does everyone just skip over the overwhelming reason for this? As long as this race has been around, the rampant drafting in the AG ranks has been legendary. A half dozen 20 to 40 pelotons along with the small team time trailers. the pro race it is heavily watched and corrected, so you get a shit ton of AG'ers with 20 minute faster bike times, and then tag on faster runs too. Its pretty simple really, no need to try and shoe horn some other reason for this huge disparity...


And I think them pro qualifying system we have in place is good, really good as compared to the rest of the world too. We should not be forcing anyone to race in either category, it should be each persons individual choice. We all have such different life circumstances, goals, and egos. In a fair race the standard is hard enough that no breastrokers are getting through, and virtually all who qualify are legit good athletes. All this nonsense of who should turn pro, or why the hell did they turn pro, is just that nonsense. Each of those athletes choices are theirs, they have their reasons, and overlaying yours or mine or anyone else's thoughts on what they should do, well is also nonsense..


And you argue both sides of the how many should get to race, so what is it, limit the field to some lower number of elites, early entrants, or open it up to the new and developing pros?? Folks are throwing around a lot of big numbers, but reality is that no where near those numbers show up and actually racing. The system has forced pros to enter a whole bunch of races now, even though they might just be 25% to 50% going. This is not their fault, and throwing out all these Penalties and hand slapping fixes just makes it worse.


Its a new series and there are some bugs to be worked out, but most here seem to think it is the pros fault for that bugginess. You put up 7+ million dollars in prize money to make the pros happy, and happy to do your races. You want that experience and feeling to be there after the races too, so that there is positive talk after the events, which does trickle down to the AG level where they make their real money. It would just be a waste to put up those $$ and then have all the players pissed off because of something you could have fixed easily, but instead used a heavy hand without much thought, Unfortunately this is WTC's history, making weird changes without much if any thought as to the consequences. I really hope they get this right..

I think they should keep the pro criteria the same. But make it more difficult to be an "Ironman pro." Limit it to the top 75. They are only able to race at the regional championships, concentrate the majority of the prize money and media at those races. The top 25 ranked pros qualify for the World Championships, the middle 25 get to be an Ironman pro the next year and the bottom 25 have to requalify to be an Ironman pro at a race designated by Ironman. All the other Ironman races would have smaller prize purses, but would be for new pros or pros who weren't good enough to race in the top 75. Think of it as the Nike tour to the PGA and then the top ranked of those pros would face off against the bottom 25 of Ironman pros to be able to race in the top 75 the next season.

Tim

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If they did that the winner of Texas would have been Patrick Lange and you lose the excitement and opportunity for new blood to come in and shake things up.

I mean don't take it out of context -- I think the pro qualification is good, plenty challenging, and that IM did what they needed to do to address athlete concerns about registration. Just putting out some other thoughts too. Not going hard that any of them should be implemented. I think this whole thread was misguided from the jump. The US has tough pro standards. A lot of other countries don't. Why focus our time on the back of the pack pro field? Our time is better spent elsewhere.

Totally agree that drafting plays an impact in hitting the standard. If people get their pro cards that way maybe they'll find Race Ranger to be a challenge on the pro circuit.

Seems way too condensed imo. That's what PTO is for right now. But that would be one of the smallest professional sport leagues out there. It just doesn't make sense for a mass participation endurance sport. Plus it's really hard to get all of the top athletes to show up to the same place with competing race brands. I think having the Pro Series & non-Pro Series pro races does some of this naturally. You won't see a lot of the bigger names at the lower level races, which gives developing pros a chance to chase stronger finishes. I think your system sort of already exists. You just have depth down to 100 total racers at bigger races. I don't see a problem. The roads are wide enough to have 100 people go off first.

I also think there are plenty of athletes outside of your criteria who are capable of challenging on the right day. There are a lot of good athletes in the PTO top-200. TRH was a good example.


'

Your assertion is difficult to substantiate with data and the subsequent performance of a significant percentage of 'Pros' suggests that the transition to being a competitor rather than a participant in the Pro field suggests that the standard is flawed.
https://stats.protriathletes.org/rankings/men?nation=US
Having said that, the only two reasons this can become an issue is:
1) If the MPro tail impacts the leading WPros (see Oceanside 2023 and most recently Findlay's yo-yoing with MPros who were both weak swimmers AND weak bikers at St George. Comment: Several have said that there's an easy solution: increase the gap between MPro and WPro but that means all the amateur full value participants start later.
2) If the field is limited and Pros ranked in (say) the top hundred find there is no room at the inn before the advertised entry deadline. Comment: IM have gone some way to at least flagging the extent to which the Pro start lists are 'filling up' with green/amber highlighting. And Pros need to get on and plan their racing schedule in a 'professional' way, not leave it, as they've been able to for years, to enter 22 days before.