Kirk you sound confused and upset........ I'm talking sports and comparing pro athletes, I don't know either of them. Don't confuse "sports talk" with "personal agenda". Like I said just armchair quarterbacking just like every other sports fan on the planet does. The whole entire article is based on armchair quarterbacking. Both are clearly amazing champions

Winning record on less important competitions than Hawaii dont mean much. If you get beaten time after time in Kona the guys who beat you probably are better triathletes than you are or you dont prepare as good as the guys winning Kona.


Maybe this is the year for Potts to show TD wrong

Ryan, I don't think you can look at Tim's times and say they were slow. He put down those times in the same time frame that a lot of guys were going Sub 8 all over the place. Tim may have not done a sub 8, but he beat Peter Reid, Thomas Hellriegel, Jurgen Zack, Luc Van Lierde all who did put down sub 8's. Yes, you can say those sub 8's were on the same fast courses in Roth and Austria that guys break 8 hours on today, but they were doing it back then. Tim just got a few slow years in Kona. Stadler was only biking 4:35 on those windy years. If he had a fast year like Mark and Dave did in 1989, Tim would have put down an 8:0x. Keep in mind Tim ran 2:45 in Kona and he did not even need go that fast. The only reason the guys are consistently faster today is they have access to better bike technology (and even then the bike times are not that much faster.....Stadler still has the Kona bike record on a Kuota Kalibur, with a flapping race number from 9 years ago). Don't under estimate how hard these guys were training and how fit they were. Look at the progression of track and field 1500-10,000 meter times in the last 20 years. It's not like they have dramatically improved.....since 1984, the 10,000m record in a controlled track environment has improved by 53 seconds. Since 1998 it has changed by only 5 seconds. It provides a good benchmark for how much better pro athletes are today vs 2000:

https://en.wikipedia.org/...d_record_progression

Triathlon has not changed that much other than bike technology. Fleck did an analysis of the number of people going sub 9:30 in Kona now vs 1991 (when he was there I believe). The numbers going sub 9:30 are not that different. In 1989, Mark Allen went 51+4:37+2:40 for a 8:09. If we believe today's marketing about bike technology and tire rolling resistance (which we should) Mark goes 7:59. Arguably the run course was also harder with a visit in and out of the pit at T2. That was 26 years ago.

People underestimate how much was already figured out about endurance sports 20-30 years ago. We all know how fast Rominger and Indurain were going at the world hour records back in 1994. Yes, they were probably doped, but that just proves how much the docs understood about endurance physiology.

Hopefully what HAS advanced over the last 5-6 years is the amount of doping control, but I am not entirely sure we are not seeing some aspects of a fairytale. Maybe less so in triathlon than other sports, but no doubt it is in our sport too. It's not like ITU/WTC is running a blood passport.

i agree with you Dev, to compare times in kona...it requires some knowledge of the sport...

Tim deboom first win in kona 2001

Extremely windy condition
-normann stadler rode 4:45.... tim rode 2min slower....

Tim was a front pack swimmer, and close the deal with a 2:45 marathon and win the race by 15minutes. You can rest assure he would still be at the front of the race in 2015 and on the podium with this level of performance.

It just happen to bike aerodynamic is greatly improving...combine with deeper field and some very quiet condition in the last 5-8 years.... it made the race quicker on the bike....

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

 Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to snub what Tim did, mainly trying to point out that it's not directly applicable to today's generation. The market, depth of competition, number of races etc. is vastly different. It's apples and oranges. The racing strategy from 2000 would not win you in 2015

It sounds like what Tim is saying is "you have to do what I did in order to be a champion". And what Andy/Hoff are saying is that's probably not his best bet in today's market ( The putting all your eggs in one basket approach)

If you analyze the times in big chunks of years (5-10yr span) there is no doubt though that the fields are getting faster and deeper on the top tier pro scene though. Obviously due to weather there are outlier years. The difference between first place to 10th used to be more like 25-30 minutes avg , whereas now it's down into the teens consistently. With the main difference being that the bike times average are much faster than they were back in Tim's day. Seems like average bike times have become significantly faster while marathon times are slightly slower. Bike technology might have a little bit to do with it, but I think the vast majority is just a change in strategy and depth of the field. Today you really can't wait until the run to be aggressive

One thing I found very odd though is that the span from roughly 1994 to 2004 seemed to average much slower times than those before or after that, any idea why? (eliminating outliers) If someone has spare time and feels like graphing it out I'd love to see that

I think the underlying issue in this discussion is that to many triathletes, IM and Kona in particular is the ONLY thing that matters.

It would be interesting to see how this conversation would go if you replaced Andy Potts with Simon Lessing. Apparently he was doing things wrong too. On his way to 6 world titles but no Kona wins. Chump! (Pink)

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Formerly DrD

As far as I can see the gap between 1st and 10th has been around 15-25min for a long time. One of the years Tim won the gap was as low as any of the recent years so not seeing the trend you speak of. I think the biggest difference between now and then is that more people swim fast so more people ride together which leads to faster bike times. As others have mentioned Tim was a good swimmer and a great runner so he would have been up there today as well. There were a few years in a row with slow conditions in Kona back then the same way the last few years have been relatively fast so you can't draw any meaningful conclusions comparing those times.

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

Average difference 1st place vs 10th place. Not huge but still definitely trending down
1995-2004: 22.5 min avg diff
2005-2014: 17.3 min avg diff

Average winning time also significantly trending downwards
1995-2004: 8:23
2005-2014: 8:13

(this is rough glancing at the minutes without going into specific seconds)


Avg time gap 1st-10th by 5yrs:
1995-1999: 22min
1999-2004: 23
2005-2009: 16
2010-2014: 18

Avg winning time by 5yrs, very significant drop lately:
1995-1999: 8:20
1999-2004: 8:27
2005-2009: 8:15
2010-2014: 8:11

I think it would be interesting to have a statistician look at this, are there any specific explanations for 96 and 2004 - removing those I'm not sure I see what you're seeing

Mainly weather extremes so that's why i looked at 10yr span to help average.... but even if you remove the 2 highest outliers from each time span, it's more like:

1995-2004: 16 min avg diff
2004-2014: 12

so the upper outliers aren't changeing much there. Would love to see someone chart all this out though

As more and more of these ITU studs start racing Ironman it's going to throw all these stats out the window though!

That's a far cry from the 25-30min vs in the teens you talked about earlier. I think the difference is too small with not enough data to say the quality of the athletes are significantly different. Different tactics, bike technology and faster vs slower conditions for a few years in a row might explain some of it as well.

2004 is a good example since the guy who won rode 18-19min slower than his own bike course record that day and only 3-4 people or so got under 5h. I don't think that bike ride was any less impressive than his record. Conditions on the day just plays such a big part that it's really hard to draw any meaningful conclusions based on time alone.

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

It's not a far cry, what I said was basically what happened (average time diff 1st-10th in teens vs 20s). My first comment about the difference was off the cuff, but when you average it out it's pretty close to what I first guestimated

That's averaged out over 10 year spans so yes that gives you a pretty good idea of trends. The whole point of the 10yr spans is to reduce the impact of outliers

The numbers don't lie. Obviously we are limited by a relatively small data set that contains outliers, but if you chart it out it will still trend downward

I'd bet if we stretch it out and check the avg time delta between 1st-20th place over those time frames, the downward trend would be even more obvious

I know there's a data nerd out there just dying to chart all this out! (hint hint)

My point is that the fields are not much much deeper and the quality of the athletes are not much better like you claimed first. Sligthly deeper yes, but on several occasions 10-15 years ago the time gaps were similar to today. Winning times are all over the place with some of the fastest in the 90's so it's really hard to judge. Compare Hellriegels 2nd in 96 vs his 1st in 97 for example. I think the conditions are just too variable to make any big conclusions. Having raced some of the athletes from both eras I can say that many from the old guard would be very competitive today still.

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BA coaching http://www.bjornandersson.se

Agree.

I also think that looking at winning margin isn't particularly helpful when looking for data regarding the depth of the field.
A single anomalous athlete can skew the data.

Looking at the delta between 2nd and 10th would be a much more reliable measure as to the relative compactness of the pro field.

feel free to run those numbers but i think it'll show the same trend

avg time delta is roughly 23% tighter from decade to decade, that's a lot IMO. If you go 1st-20th (or 2nd-20th) I think the trend will be even more obvious

winning times are also 10min faster avg from decade to decade, which again IMO is a big difference over two decades

One would assume that as time goes on the fields would get faster and more competitive, and the numbers we have available seem to support it. That said I'll bail out now and let ya'll argue it out. Hopefully somone can chart more accurate data........

Actually I think a better comparison would be to look at 5-25th. That really tells you how competitive the field is. 1-5 is affected by the very top athletes of the day, which arguably are just as good all the way from 1989 till today.

Look at the top 10 from 1989 (Allan, Scott, Welch, Glah, Kiuru, Tinley, Zach, Cordier, Browning, Dietrich) and tell me that if you put them on today's technology the times would not be "just as fast". I THINK what is different is positions 5th through 25th and how tight that is. We could probably conclude that this is tighter (I don't have time to do the stats), but maybe it is not.

To Ryan, it is easy to justify that you have it tougher as a pro today than years ago, and maybe fighting for position 5th to 25th, you might have a point. But 1st-5th has always been really tough.

Not if they enforce no-drafting. Look what happened to Raelert today.

I'll bet the times are down because of the drafting and lack of enforcement. ITU guys were trained to draft. I'm guessing it really hard for them not to even if its illegal.

I think DeBoom's racing strategy could win Kona in 2015. It might be a more risky financial strategy to focus on Kona than Potts and Hoffman wish to choose, but I have little doubt DeBoom could contend for the Kona win if he was in early 30s again and chose to focus on winning Kona. He would likely be coming off at least a decent ITU career, as he seemed to have everything USAT is seeking (swim/run talent, smart, work ethic, willing to travel/sacrifice financially), and as you you wrote yourself, the ITU guys are going to skew the data in the coming years. :)

But back to the DeBoom point.
Would it be good for American pros to race the best?
Or should they stay home and not race the best?

If you believe that, I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona I'll make you a deal on. Phelps wasn't even the most focused, passionate athlete in his training group during that time period.

Well, perhaps you have more inside info than i have but i've always understood that he was/is very focused, with the exception of some times between the '08 and '12 oly games. After all, he did win World Swimmer of the Year seven (7) times ('03, 04, 06, 07, 08, 09, and 12), three more times than his closest competitor, Ian Thorpe, who won it 4 times ('98, 99, 01, and 02).

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I certainly do. And I'm not questioning his ability nor his accomplishments. Just don't believe the hype that it was his focus, work ethic, etc.

OK, so can you tell us about the source of your "inside scoop", or do I need to PM you for that info??? Did you swim for NBAC and/or Club Wolverine??? Or did/do you have a close friend, cousin, or whatever who did/does???

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Its awesome to have the glory of winning Kona, but you can't show off your wooden bowl to the electric company to keep the power on, or get groceries for his family. I would say I want Potts to win Kona more then any other pro over the past several years, but I don't think its going to happen. He's getting a little old, and it seems like he struggles on the bike there.

I would say that this is his last chance at winning, and its still a long shot.

agree. If anyone thinks Tim or his strategy wouldn't hold up to todays standard is crazy. I went on a run last night with a close friend who will remain nameless. He is a former pro and knows all the players and trained and raced with them. we discussed this thread and I mentioned the comments about Tim's wins not holding up to the racers of today or that his competition wasn't as stiff...He literally cracked up laughing. He said " holy shit, If someone doesn't think Tim DeBoom wouldn't be competitive today at Kona if he was in his early 30's..." "he just shook his head and said that's crazy. Tim has a quality you can't teach and it's how to adapt and get shit done. I'm not confused or upset other than I think it's crazy how people are diminishing what he has accomplished because he didn't win outside Kona as much. yeah, most people may not like his way because it was tough as nails. I don't care what Potts has accomplished. The question was posed why aren't Americans winning Kona? Tim was challenging the way they approached their "way" of doing things. to a certain extent he CAN look down from a perch because ha has won it twice! The comparison can be made to golfers. Guys who won a few majors vs guys who won a ton of times on tour but didn't win a major. I bet those guys would give up those wins for those majors and they would ask those guys their advice. comparing generations is like comparing Tiger vs Jack Nicklaus. one can argue that Jack shot scores that were comparable to Tiger based off of using inferior equipment. Same with Tim and guys of his era. they were able to accomplish a TON and be speedy withOUT the knowledge and equipment guys have today.

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Kirk Noyes

Downtubes are for Dinosaurs