So why would it be so bad to draw a penalty if it would be advantageous to the overall outcome? //
Ya, and then you could dope to the gills, get away with it as long as possible, and if caught, just serve your two year penalty. That would be advantageous to your outcome too, just ask Kevin Moats. He went for your double strategy here, but of course got caught on both, but somehow still holds records at ironman while drafting and doping, so maybe a great deal for you!!!
kind of a false analogy.
There are “fouls” in many sports and drafting is a “foul”.
Nobody says the left tackle was “cheating” when he got called for holding, it’s just considered part of the game. Let’s be honest, it is a very common strategy in basketball to intentionally foul late in the game to stop the clock and “increase your probability of winning”. Nobody calls this cheating, it’s part of the game.
So to the originally posters point, it is all about perception. As a group, a lot of triathletes are very whinny, overly focused on a bunch of rules and tend to label penalties or fouls as “cheating”, but that is just not how most other sports handle it. If triathlon was approached like hockey, basketball or football, position or drafting penalties would just be whatever, its how the game is played. Effectively the sport makes penalties kind of a joke because of general lack of enforcement, so to me it is not illogical to just push the envelope and just take the penalty and if you happen to get caught if there is going to be a complete lack of officiating.
Of course everyone is entitled to compete by their own code and I am sure there are football and basketball players who never intentionally commit penalties and likewise I think it’s great if people want to have their own personal code of honor/sportsmanship and never intentionally draft. However, strictly in the sense of is the likely payoff for drafting greater than the penalty, I would say yes.
That’s not true. In team sports, you are competing on a field directly against each other. So you can foul if you want, but the other team or player can counter.
In sports where you’re competing but in no direct contact with the other competitors, you don’t get that chance. The best way to have a fair competition is for everyone to follow the rules. That’s why Golf is such a stickler with rules. Your main competition can be 9 holes in front of you, same as triathlon. If it were boxing, and you want to punch below the belt for strategy, go for it.
Wide is the road, and great is the temptation that leads to the path of cheating.