Am I misreading your plot or how can you have dips, like between 22nd-23rd on the female and 33rd-34th and 37th-38th on the male side? ie, if somebody placed higher in the overall, how can their percentage time be lower than the person ahead of them? How did you average the times?

Good question. It's the average of the percent of winner's time for each place over all the years for which there was a finisher for that place. The reason you would get a dip is the number of data points being averaged could get reduced. ie, averaging 4 data points drops to 3. Arguably, exactly 4 data points should be averaged always, and the lines should just stop as of the lowest place that has no finisher in any year.

Data here:
https://docs.google.com/...L8s/edit?usp=sharing

You and Thorsten and others claim that #35 woman has a tougher time of qualifying than #50 man. Andrew Messick says otherwise. Mathematics says otherwise. But, if there is validity to your and Thorsten's claim, then explain why it is the case that the 14th percentile female has to work harder to score the requisite points than 11th percentile male. Because if there is validity then it is a powerful argument for increasing the female numbers. No one thinks it should be harder for the final female pro to qualify than for the final male. But, many people do not think that it should be easier, which it will be at 50, and mathematically speaking, should be at 35. So, put some meat behind your claim that #35 female has it tougher than #50 male and you may find a more sympathetic audience.

AFAIK, you would have to go back to the 1998 lawsuit agreement between WTC, ITU, and USAT in which ITU acknowledges it as the Ironman World Championship. I think that ITU can have it's own "Long Course WC", but unlikely to be at the formal Ironman distances.

Marketing and potential sales. It can only help them to sell more gear to people sympathetic to the cause. And since this is not a controversial one like abortion or the death penalty, it is simple to get behind it. If your compared that list to the pros in Tri-Equal, how many are supported by those companies?

Plus we don't know if they are vocal and pushing the agenda, vs. just saying use our name on your site.

ITU reverse that decision because there are only 35 pro women on the pier? Really? And if you take away the World Championship title, will that many pros choose not to race Kona? Winning Kona is winning Kona and will [at least for the foreseeable future] carry the same prestige.

Were I a pro, I'd definitely rather say "I won Kona" than "I won the ITU Long Distance World Championship at Roth." How many people in the real world have heard of Challenge Roth vs. the number of people that have heard of the Hawaii Ironman? I'm not trying to be a WTC fanboy, it's just reality.

Okay, my question seems to have been incredibly stupid in the context it was written.

What I meant was...

Have you ever plotted the graph when there were 50 women racing during the pre-KPR years. I think there were generally something like 100 men, 50 women racing in that late 2000's. What would the 50/50 line look like then?

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I have not. Hunting down results from before the current ironmanlive athlete tracker system is a PITA. Maybe I'll look to go back a few more years, though there are far more pressing things in my life than data entry of Kona results from a decade ago.... :)

Your original premise is just wrong. Your usual top ten at Kona do not need to chase points. They mainly need to validate and then are free to race Challenge, halfs, chase big money races whatever they want. If you can give examples of top 10 Kona finishers who had to over race to qualify the following year I will gladly change my opinion.

I think, don't quote me on this, but wasn't Harry Wiltshire one of the last men to qualify? I found this quote from him:
Since writing this update, we heard from Harry post-race as he boarded the plane to Japan: “The crazy points chase continues! My fifth place at Sweden and various other results over the weekend – such as Dan Hawksworth's fantastic result at the North American champs – mean I need a podium to get a slot. I can't walk yet, but it is a long time till I race again on Sunday… Better go and get that flight!”

kny wrote:

You and Thorsten and others claim that #35 woman has a tougher time of qualifying than #50 man. Andrew Messick says otherwise. Mathematics says otherwise. But, if there is validity to your and Thorsten's claim, then explain why it is the case that the 14th percentile female has to work harder to score the requisite points than 11th percentile male. Because if there is validity then it is a powerful argument for increasing the female numbers. No one thinks it should be harder for the final female pro to qualify than for the final male. But, many people do not think that it should be easier, which it will be at 50, and mathematically speaking, should be at 35. So, put some meat behind your claim that #35 female has it tougher than #50 male and you may find a more sympathetic audience.

As I read Thorsten's argument he's showing two data points:

• Women need higher KRP to qualify
• Women who qualify race more Ironman distance races than men who quality

From here, he makes the argument that it is more difficult to qualify for women than for men. While this may be true, there are two logical counter arguments which might explain why this is the case (correct me if I'm wrong...)

• Higher KPR for women can be attributed to fewer women per race so the top women can accumulate more KPR more easily since each race gives the same KPR to the x place finisher for each men and women. What this means is that a xth percentile woman will accumulate more KPR than a similarly placed male.
• There may be another reason why women who qualify end up racing more than men. Sponsorships? Variability? My guess is that with a smaller population, there is a higher degree of uncertainty of the "will I make it?" variety. What I mean here is that if we're comparing two populations of varying sizes, the larger population will have less variability in the KPR needed to qualify so women have less certainty of knowing if they'll make it.

Now, I'm all for 50 women, mostly because it's a WC and because bad press is bad press. There may well be no way to know why women race more than men - you could poll a group of athletes of both genders and ask them their KQ strategies, but my guess is that this issue is big enough now that it would colour the discussion.

You're right, the top 10 are typically not chasing points, bad example. But, I think everyone agrees that there are significant portions of both fields, mens and womens, that need to chase points to qualify. It seems to me that it is in WTC's best interests to maximize the number of pros that need to chase points, thus keeping them away from competitors races, and that is the real reason for 50/35. Of course they'll never admit to this. This is not an argument for or against 50 slots for women, just an attempt to discuss the real reason behind the disparity.

I'm asking a question more than stating a hypothesis, but is it possible that the women's points chase is closer not because of what the top finishers do, but rather what the bottom ten at a race do? If there are twenty men and twelve women in a race, ten men go home with zero points, but almost every woman gets points that put then in the kona chase. Half the men get the message that their chances are over by miss year, whereas more women are still in the chase mid season, despite pedestrian results compared to the top?

Figured as much. Don't go doing all that work on my account.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

If this Ironman thing should ever generate any interest outside of family members and age-groupers, they have to narrow down that field significantly. 25 men and 25 women is plenty. There are just not enough names people will remember and who are really in the mix.

Lets have regional races (1 per continent) and the top 5 pros qualify for the world championship. Enough. And enough of pros in Kona, that are 40 minutes behind the leaders. That is insulting to the sport.

You do bring up an interesting theory, maybe it is true, maybe not. I listened to the interview with Messick yesterday. What struck me is that he said they do not give all their prize money earmarked for women away. No idea why that is the case.
What also strikes me, is the lack of female participation at the Challenge Middle East races. Some of the biggest prize purses in the sport with the opportunity to possibly win $1m. And that didn't get a ton of women there. Not even a lot of ITU women. Sure I get they have Olympic quaifying but we are talking life changing money here. The Challenge boosters on this forum always say "Challenge will have equal slots!" Well they have not in their 2 big paying championship races. I haven't done the math, only eyeballed the start lists, but it seems that they are roughly 2:1 male to female. Hmmmm.

Not enough women Pro's show up to a race.

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I think the backwards ass thinking in treating women like 3rd class citizens has a whole lot to do with that. It really isn't difficult to figure that one out. Some of that maybe perception over reality but that's all it takes.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

this morning i was listening to a podcast with Dede Griesbauer. She was saying that she and Cameron Brown had similar race history (2IM, 2 halfs), similar KPR (~4500) but he was almost guaranteed a spot for Kona, yet she would have to do another and how unfair this was

I was intrigued so when I got home I looked at their races. Cameron had to beat the likes of Terenzo, Tim Reed, Van Berkel, Crowie, Dylan McNeice. I did not recognize one name for the people Dede raced. I guess I know more of the male names, but I struggle to see those 4500 points being the same difficulty to achieve. Are male and female KPRs really equal ?

I looked at IMMT last year, NA champs, high point race. 17 men, 7 women. This is the race guys like Raelert used to scrape through to Kona and the women's field was not very deep, yet only 7 women showed up.

So you're saying that if the competition isn't the best out there, then racing an ironman as hard as you can is exactly the same as sitting on the couch? Without the airfare and hotel travel costs as well? That's great!

And it must be fantastic to show up at the Kona starting line having done an extra Ironman that has zero impact on your body. Imagine how cool that is for your career!

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I don't think that is what he is saying at all. He is simple pointing out that the competition Brown completed against is not equal to the competition Dede raced to get "similar results". I have not investigated the two races of each but if his research is accurate, I would agree that it is disingenuous to compare your record to someone getting the results against top level competition when your results are against what would be considered 2nd or 3rd tier level pros. If Dede was Kona caliber, shouldn't she be winning against this type of competition, which in turn would get her more points and eliminate the need to race another IM event?

Again, this is not an indictment on Dede.....I simple used her because she was the one identified in the comment.

While I'm a big fan of Brett's podcast, what he is doing here is the same thing he has been doing dive this has bubbled to the surface. The straw man creation and dismantlement is impressive. The thing I got from Marcag's post is that at a "championship" race, the female who was dfl got the same points as a male who finished in the top 40%. When it comes down to it, nobody but their own mother gives a crap about the 35th male or female. The competitive ones don't chase points and the others are too far off the radar for fans to care about. The only valid agreement for that many slots is an Shelley's like Bevan Dochery last year who was injured in Kona and only had the second half of the year to chase points.

I don't think that's what I said and it is certainly not what I meant.

Personally I would like to see the 80 best pro athletes at Kona. I would also like to see the best 1500 (or whatever it is) amateur athletes

In a perfect world, there would be a system that allows to compare results, across gender and age. Until that system exists, proportionality is probably the fairest system.

I don't like proportionality. I look at AG results from last year's IMMT and AGs such as 60-65 are "discriminated" against. There were performances in 60-65 that were more Kona worthy (IMO) than 40-45 yet they didn't get slots.

I have tried different models, see the pro and con of each and unfortunately the one that seems the fairest is proportionality. But certainly not perfect.

At one point I thought "Just take the top 80 KPR point getters". This doesn't work. My observation was that 4500 KPR points for a male and female do not seem to be the same. The podcasters were comparing Dede and Cam and *my opinion* is that it's not a fair comparison. This doesn't take away that Dede's results are very impressive.

No, sorry, you are mistaken. I clearly said IMMT, full distance North American championship with Kona points