I wonder if IMWI is the best choice for a women's only field. With sunrise not coming until 6:35 or so, depending on a multitude of factors, 25 minutes may not be enough of a lead, atleast if a woman crossing the line first is the goal.

I'm sure most IM races could have this same issue, but given the relative difficulty of the IMWI course combined with the time of sunrise - I put the odds of an AGer crossing the line first at better than 50%


ETA: The women should still get a relatively clear bike.

How soon do the women folk start bitching about equal representation at Canada, Santa Cruz and Chattanooga?

I assumed the pink would have been obvious here, guess not.

You might want to edit this or take it down.

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Now people will start complaining that they split the men and women's races to limit their overall payout. Which might not be untrue.

And 25 minutes is not enough to stay ahead of the AG men, but maybe enough for 2/3rds of the bike. Might even be worse: only the slower women will benefit from the faster AG men.

Any word or guesses on if they are keeping all of the other races as pro races, or are they going to switch some of the events (take out a pro field from one race, add to another)?

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Apparently longer than it took a man to start bitching about what women might want to bitch about. :) (No complaints in the Twitter-sphere yet from those uppity, bitchy women)

This does not limit overall pay out ... Of the 6 races listed as separate M/F fields, Wisconsin, Lake Placid, Santa Cruz & Augusta currently do not even have pro prize purses

Also, only going off last year (by memory) 25ma in gap form Pro F to AG men would have put the first female at the finish 10'ish min ahead to first AG'er ... 25min will at east limit the crossover to a small number of athletes. For the AG men that are catching pro women on the bike (similar to Kona) the difference in speeds negates any advantage the slower F pros will have. NOW if they want to insure a F gets to the line first they may need a little more time

Cheers,

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Dave Latourette
http://www.TTENation.com

Didn't they try this before at IMLP/ IMCdA and it failed? They were on some sort of rotation of males one year and females the next year. It didn't last that long.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

All they have really done is move the women's pro races from Canada and Chat. to Placid and Wisconsin, two races that had no pro fields at all this year. So that's two more races that will have some kind of pro field, although only one gender. Then they are adding essentially half of a pro race to each of Augusta and Santa Cruz 70.3, so for each gender it is one more 70.3 race opportunity.

The only thing that this tells me is that they are thinking that maybe there is some loss in eliminating the pro field from a race altogether, maybe they saw a drop in media interest in Placid and the other races coming up that have no pro fields. So this way the can add a pro field in to some races (Placid and Wisconsin) without adding prize money or points to their total expenditure. Kind of slick.

I would be interested to know how the elimination of the pro field is impacting the NA races. While I doubt many age group athletes race specifically for that reason, it does take something away from the race on some levels in terms of total attention paid/vibe, etc... Wonder if WTC has a metric for that.

What? No prize money for a race with a pro field? OK, that's just wrong.

And while the first female may make it to T1 without getting caught, I assure you many of the other pro women will still get mixed up with the AG men. It's frustrating for both groups. However, I don't see a better solution. It wouldn't be fair to delay the AG start and sunrise obviously limits the pro start.

Interesting - everything old is new again.

Graham Fraser did this 10+ years ago alternating the mens/womens Pro fields between IMLP and IMCDA. Makes sense and is a good thing at several levels.

I was in the room at one of the pre-race Pro Meetings when Graham first proposed this - there was almost no response from the assembled Pros! I think after two years Graham cancelled the program it as so few Pros seemed interested in it.

Hopefully the second time around more will show some interest.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

there is a possibility that this will dilute the media interest in the female pro races just like other sports. also as mentioned in other posts 25 minutes is not enough for a female 1,2 ,3 first over the finish line.
the female pro's will have very big targets on their backs for he elite male AG'ers

Bringing up this thread as I was reading the Crank and the guy really hates the idea of split pro fields.


http://triathlonworld.com/news/weekend-recap-fast-times-and-emojis-142293


It seems to me that he is being short-sighted and not considering one of the reasons was to give Females a clear path on the Swim & Bike (mostly?). But now that we have had this going on for a year or two, I am curious as to know if anyone's thoughts changed or developed having seen or been part of it.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Might need to extend the time to the women if they aren't coming across the finish line first which is happening a lot. If I was a top age-group female, it would make me more inclined to race the male-only pro races and vice versa. It seems most people don't understand pro races for one sex or another. They just identify first male, first female. This entire thing hurt pros IMHO and their value, but I think the sport continues to evolve and their is simply less and less value pros offer in the first place.

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What races has this happened at?

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blog

Based of Sportstats time of day, it seems this past weekend the top AGer crossed before Lindsey did. Can't recall enough of these to look more on sportstats but I do recall last year at placid Heather being the only female to cross before Ryan

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Ironman Boulder, Ironman Wisconsin. Ironman Wisconsin a couple of people were across before Liz. If you go back and look at the finish video it is very awkward and a couple of guys finished before her. I think it may have happened this weekend at Canada as well but didn't verify.

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Gleason did cross first.

Then, when Corbin was 200M before finish RD stopped 3 70.3 racers so she could have runway to self. Corbin was gracious to wave thanks to the athletes. RD didnt do this 2nd and 3rd place. Awkward.

Two improvements:
1. Give 30min not 10min lead to women not for them to finish first but to get past first swim lap before AG starts and safer riding. Gleason was off bike before McBride
2. Separate finish chutes

Otherwise i really like the women only race. Look forward to mens only 2018!

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@rhyspencer

I find it really sad that the value of pros is decreasing. I see it all the time in various posts even here that people just don't care. As for me, I have a long way to go as I figure things out, but one of the main things keeping me going in the sport is that I have a long term goal to get my pro card. Dunno if it'll happen but I'm going to try. So I guess it's sad for me, because I'm one of the shrinking minority that considers a pro race to be a value add.

Too lazy to look it up but if last name is Gleason first name is prob Dylan. He was pro last few years, strong biker. Going to be tough to give even 30 minutes with all kinds of guys going back to Amatuer ranks.

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Dylan did 8:58 vs Corbin 9:17 so starting women 6:30 & AG 7am would give time to complete first lap of swim before AG + leader cross first. Again, sharing the 70.3 finish chute obstructs regardless so I am more focused on the clean swim.

Dylan had another baby this spring so stepped back to AG according to his blog.

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@rhyspencer

Pros have not done a good enough job positioning themselves into a place for people to care. They are horrible at marketing (outside a select few), they do not make themselves visible enough before/after races, etc. And to be honest even if they did, still no one would care. There is a long list about the relevancy of pros, and it seems more and more are stepping back down to the AG ranks every year.

But if you look at some of the pros who have developed a great following; Frodeno, Thomas, Hoffman, etc. They not only have extremely likable personalities, but they have developed great brands that people want to get behind.

People just do not care that much about the sport beyond their own aspirations and that is just fine.

I wonder if that is simply due to the logistics of IMC having the 70.3 on the same day. At 2016 IMLP, it seems the women had 30 minutes. Ryan, being a bit of a special AGer, still wasn't able to pass Heather but did pass all others. I would guess at races without an AGer that fast at least the podium could cross with 30 minutes.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Are you sure that women had 30 minutes before AGers took off? We only had 10 minutes in between Pro/AG this year and it caused a big issue on second loop of pro swim.

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