I wonder if they'll get 50 women to Kona by taking slots away from KNY's over represented AGs

edit: IM has the worst PR guy ever. They're so tone deaf.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I believe KNY just redistributes the same number in a more fair basis. So, if an AG loses some, another must gain to remain fair. Taking those spots and moving them to the Pro pool will throw off the balance again.

The interesting thing is that they don't differentiate between event specific representation and general representation (Kona) IE�.way more women (pure number and % of representation) in NA vs Europe or Asia Pacific. That would bend the numbers a bit.

Like you say they need a better PR person on issues relating to women. IMO this is intended to justify their stance on 35 vs 50 (pro) women on the Pier, there is room on the pier for 15 more bikes, no debate about that.

Maurice

Reading some of the feedback... WTC better call the burns ward.

So... 2% of the pier neither qualified, got lottery or legacy slots... hmmmm.... is that 40 spots going to sponsors, celebs etc?

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Swim. Overbike. Walk.

and no mention of the fact that women have to earn a lot more qualifying points than men to make it to kona.
points for woman in 35th place are a lot higher than the points the 50th man had to earn.

the reasoning behind the inequality is becoming more and more absurd.

It all makes sense if you read it as an April Fools article.

I seriously don't get it. It's pretty obvious that it will be even pro slots soon, so why not now? One of the main ways to build women's participation like they say would be to open up the slots. And even if that weren't true, it makes no sense to so willingly stake a claim to the wrong side of history on this issue.

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David Roche
Some Work, All Play podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/...ll-play/id1521532868
Coaching: https://swaprunning.com/

Let the women pros have equal numbers. I don't care either way, although the argument against can be made via statistics, but who really gives a crap. Only 10 men or 10 women probably have a legit shot at winning that day anyway so the other 40 or 25 or whatever doesn't mean much.


On the AG side...


I've posted this before.

If I were Kona King for a day...


- Give each AG winner at each IM an automatic slot. Make that the only guaranteed slot. That's 26 automatic slots (assuming at least 1 started per AG) x 40 qualifying races = 1040 automatic slots. If the AG winner doesn't want the auto slot it will roll down until it's taken. If there are no finishers in a AG the slot rolls to the AG that's most statistically deserving. The current method rolls the slot back into the gender.

- The other 1000 or so slots are at large slots based on the AGR. % of AG to the total IM participants equals that number of slots. So if the M40-44 AG accounts for 10% they would get 100 slots. That goes straight from the rankings. So the first 100 that are not auto qualifiers in the rankings will get an invite with roll downs occurring until all 100 slots are taken.

- This means the female AG's and older AG's will lose much of the slots they have enjoyed over the years in a system that was statistically unfair to the four AG's in the M30-49 range. Charity time is over. Sure the race will be very M30-49 heavy but so be it. The math is the math. Get over it. If an AG only accounts for 1% of the total field it shouldn't be getting 4% of the slots. Likewise, if the AG accounts for 20% of the field it should get more than 10% of the slots. The women have statistically fared better than the older male AG's due to WTC's archaic formula in which unused slots must remain within the gender. That resulted in some wacky allocations where some female AG would get 2 slots even though they accounted for 1% of the field while the M40-44 got 6 slots but accounted for 20% of the field.

- Will this lead to point chasing? Absolutely. That's to WTC's benefit.

- Keep the lottery as is.

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

Thanks for posting.

Goes to show Headline news works because this thread for such an important issue has 6 replies. Maybe we should put the word Lance in title to get ST engaged on this-:)

I for one am downright infuriated by this. Justifying only 35 women by using AG distribution methodology is rediculous. T&F don't reduce the10,000 meter final to 7 women vs 12 like men because there are less women racing the heats. No, they create equality in the finals. Same as swimming. Same as fucking badminton etc etc etc.

The real solution for WTC is to STOP calling it the world championship because every sport I can see when it comes to WC's creates equality. They should call it WTC IRONMAN HAWAII brought to you by cash.

My god, even CYCLING has WC fields in the TT, ROAD, TRACK that has by country break downs for numbers. There maybe a whole larger equality issue for cycling yes, but at least at the worlds they are driving equality and opportunity for non cycling nations in same fashion as UCI does for men.

Solution as I have proposed is 40/40. That actually gives slots back to WTC to whore out to celebrities.

Disclosure: I am racing a WTC event. IM WALES. All bought and flights paid with family home in Tenby.

That said I would really like to get to Kona and join forces with triequal.com to bring Heather Fuhr, Paula Newby-Fraser to the table sans Andrew and present a history and PR lesson on this issue. Then ask for triequal.com to hear 2 world champions, employees of WTC, suggest how to get this finalized for 2016 at the WTC PE board. Those two are closest to the decisioning. I'm not convinced this is as much an Andrew Messick fuck up as people think. WTC is owned by PRivate Equity and to be blunt, that typically means white male never wrong and trying to sell....I suspect they don't like being told what to do whether it is clearly right.

Look up http://www.triequal.com and listen to real Starkys podcast with Rachel, Biscay, and Sara Gross. Some good arguments outlined there.

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@rhyspencer

Move the transition area off the @#$%ing pier. When the pier was under construction the transition area was where the banquets are.

Yes they would need to tear down and set up the banquet areas twice. "Butt" with this being the World Championship and all I think they
can afford the manpower to make that happen.

I have a great idea for all of you who feel so strongly about this issue. Let's show IM we really care.

Let's get 15 AGers from ST who have qualified for Kona to band together, go to IM, and offer up these spots to the women.

Who's with me? No one?

How about all those still racing IM and trying for your Kona dream, wanna boycott IM? Anyone?

How about the women who do make it, are they going to boycott? Hello?

STFU then.

That was a long and drawn out ramble to get to one point.......there won't be 50 pro women in Kona this year.

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

Dude, that is a ridiculous sentiment. All we are talking about is equal numbers of male/female pros for an endurance race. It should be a no-brainer. It should be an easy, obvious, and quick decision by WTC. And in 2015 it shouldn't require a freaking sit-in to get to Ironman equality.

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David Roche
Some Work, All Play podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/...ll-play/id1521532868
Coaching: https://swaprunning.com/

Well said. Agree totally.

I completely agree. My point is gnashing teeth and writing harshly worded comments to internet articles gets nowhere.

With all things in life, if you feel strongly about it, get behind it.

Your right. It shouldn't require a boycott, but I have never seen WTC do anything that didn't significantly affect their bottom line. If you want change now, and not a year or two from now, then a protest needs to be staged in a meaningful way (meaningful to WTC, not the athletes).

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Ready or not here I come!
Coaching NY's Southern Tier
Swift^3

take the energy spent trying to write twisted messaging about how they love women when they don't actually give a shit.

take that energy, apply it to shoving 15 more bikes on the pier, or just off the pier.

problem solved.
women happy, PR guy doesn't have to make up bullshit
people like Ironman more

And maybe, just maybe it helps deepen women's fields a little too as a bonus.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I agree on the Pro side 100%.

For the AG side - I don't really have a problem with the current system, but I could support a system similar to what you suggest. I think I would vary the implementation slightly, mostly by changing the way points are considered and/or calculated, but in principal I think it would work.

It would probably change the way a lot of us race, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I like it too, perhaps they could alternate years with qualifying formats.

I think it would actually make qualifying harder for some.... imagine an IM where there are 50 slots and 30 of them are going to the fastest 30 athletes *overall* and not within AGs. Now you now longer have guys on the M30-34 bubble blowing up racing for top 4 and missing out when they can comfortably cruise to a top 25 finish. I also think it would encourage semi-pro guys to stay AG as now the AG Kona slot (and the subsequent super fast male AG race at Kona) is much more desirable and much harder to achieve, and a good finish there will be even harder to achieve.

that said, adding 100s more guys who swim :59 and bike 5:05 will make drafting a nightmare on the Queen K, but oh well.

Ultimately all this is leading to hopefully gender equality for the pros and a Category system for the Amateurs.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Yes, this pretty much confirms that WTC uses a suboptimal algorithm to meet their goal of proportional distribution of slots and at least one slot for every represented age group.

Their algorithm fulfills the latter, but at the expense of the former. As I have shown, they could use an algorithm that fulfills the latter and produces a better proportional distribution.

And for everyone wondering what I'm talking about, here it is in a nutshell.

WTC states that their Kona AG allocation process is proportional distribution to participation with every age group getting at least one.

They implement this by giving every AG a slot. And then distributing the remaining slots proportionally. In reality you are only proportionally distributing a subset of the slots, specifically total slots minus number of AGs. As the total number of slots per race has decreased over the years from 120 to 100 to 70 to 50 to even 40, this has a larger and larger impact because the number of AGs stays constant at 26.

A proper implementation would be:
1. prorate distribute all slots and determine which AGs earn zero.
2. Give those AGs their single guaranteed slot.
3. Remove those AGs and their slots, and start all over again, prorate distributing the remaining slots to the remaining AGs.

The end result will be what WTC wants, but with a better prorated distribution. All AGs will get their guaranteed slot, and the prorated distribution will be better.

There are other bugs in their algorithm as well, regarding how they deal with partial slots (ie, if one AG gets 13.4 and another 1.6 and there are 15 slots to give, is it 14 and 1 or 13 and 2. They handle partial slots wrong) and also how they deal with determing the next most deserving AG to get a slot that rolls out.

All told, it's an incredibly bush league implementation for something that is awfully important to a lot of people

I guess "a lot of people" is relative............

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.

You don't think qualifying for Kona is important to a lot of people?

No, not in the context that there are over 7 billion people on the planet.

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Pink? Maybe. Maybe not. You decide.