Presto! Equality (2000 Women / 2000 Men), Fairness (no more male AG interfering with the Women's race), Economics (double AG slots and double exposure for WTC).

Only 32 woman finished last year, with the men's 60 YO Age group winner beating some. Do people REALLY want to see that? Frankly, after 10 or 15 men/women finish, who cares! How can someone who does an IM in 11:30 be a pro? Add more age groupers......they're paying the freight.

Raise your hand if you are a woman posting to this thread. Raise both hands of you are a woman pro triathlete.

See, this is the fundamental problem. There aren't enough women involved in making these decisions so their opinions and voices are easily overwhelmed and ignored. Instead they are asked about balancing work and family and their decisions about having babies. (For the love of all that is holy, if you have to ask it, please at least ask the men the same question. Last I checked it takes two.)

Maybe more women aren't pro because they have to choose between family and training. Women still take on the majority of housework and childcare at home, even though that is getting better. Their partners may not be game to pull more duty at home. This is just conjecture but if triathlon is a reflection of society as a whole, this isn't a crazy conclusion.

Triathlon has been a great equalizer in many ways except this last one.

Someone asked which professional women want 50 slots. There have been 2 opinion articles and one interview that came up when I searched ST main site. (Yes, there is part of ST that isn't a forum.) Here is the interview with Rachel Joyce:

http://www.slowtwitch.com/...oyce_Talks_4974.html

There is a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/50WomenToKona

If you (the poster who asked) took 5 minutes to look around you'd see the pro women who are asking for this.

I suggest all of you watch the show Nine for IX, particularly one called "Branded." It is an interesting look into how female athletes rate in income vs male and how those women actually make their money. Hint: It isn't from playing the actual sport.

We can all argue about why women's sports aren't as popular in the US but that has nothing really to do with adding 15 more slots to Kona. Some of the most exciting Kona finishes have come from the women's field. Which finish do you remember most? I suspect for many of you, it is this one.

no it is not. women need more points than men so they can get within the 35 slot range right now. they need to race more, and they will be more tired.
read the interview with beth gerdes. she would be in, if she were a man. now she needs to keep racing.

Just because I'm being an asshole today since I'm packing for a move, I went back to the Beth Gerdes article and looked at the questions asked after the first couple hello and thanks.

Want to hear the result?

• 9 questions were either about Wynne, pregnancy, qualified the question with something about Luke, or focused on her family life.
• 7 were about her racing and career.

In the name of providing a comparison, I picked the first article I saw on the homepage about a male athlete, the interview with Jan Kriska. Once the interview gets into the real questions, guess what?

• 12 questions about his racing
• 5 questions that included family.

I'm not saying there has to be the same number of questions about family for both male and female interviewees but I think this perfectly sums of where this sport, and society as a whole, is. Even with all the progress, still arguing over equal slots and still focusing on women athletes in relation to their families. I suspect focusing more on their accomplishments would be appreciated by both the reader and the woman being interviewed.

Back to packing boxes. I suspect I've annoyed enough people for the day.

If you want to know more about the depth of the men and women's field you have to take a look at what Thorstein is writing.
http://www.trirating.com/...eld-as-deep-as-mens/

Conclusion
I couldn’t find any data that supports the claim that the depth of the women’s field is any worse than the men’s field. (If you have other suggestions, please let me know!) While the lower number of athletes leads to bigger gaps in the Ironman races across the globe, at least the women that made it to Kona are as competitive as their male counterparts. In my eyes, the women’s race in Kona would be even more exciting than it already is if there were 50 Pro slots for the women.

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, his assessment is flawed. He puts % of finishers on the y-axis rather than absolute place of finisher. Because the field is 35 vs 50, he is then determining that the depth is equal because 7th woman performs the same as 10th male and 14th the same as 20th and 28th the same as 40th. If anything, this validates that the fields are not equally deep and that WTC is putting together fields of comparable depth using 35 and 50.

Here are performance graphs from 2011-2014. These graphs show overall place relative to percent of winner's time. Any finish > 116% of the winner is thrown out as that is not considered an honest effort, ie Raelerts 5:30 marathon time and is thus treated the same as DNF, ie not counted as a finish. As you can see, in 2011 and 2012 the women's field clearly tapers off, indicating lesser depth compared to male field. This is less apparent in 2013 and 2014.