marcag wrote:
ZenTriBrett wrote:
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!
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.
I agree with you. For pros, you want the X "best" long-course triathletes at the Ironman World Championships, just like you want only the best represented at the Olympics. But, how do you assess "best" best? Unlike T&F, you can't use time thresholds. The current KPR points system awards quantity, which is not an attribute of "best". Really, I see no better way than Qualifier races, just like Olympic Trials. You race in the Regional Qualifier of your region; no picking and choosing the geography of your choosing and no taking multiple attempts at multiple qualifiers around the world. Your pro license is in North America? You race the North America Kona Qualifier Championship and hope to get one of the 15 slots on offer to Kona for that region. At least this way the X "best" are selected via performance on a single day. Everyone has the same amount of "mandatory" racing in their legs come Kona; anything more is voluntary by the athlete. Have a bad day or sick or injured? Bummer. Take a year off of Kona.
Age groupers, different story. Ideal would be like Boston Marathon where an arbitrary time standard could be established and all who better it are allowed to race. But, that's not reasonable for Ironman. So, proportionality is fairest.