It's the athlete's responsibility to know all 70.3 miles of the course and have it committed to memory. Ironman is not at fault here.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

This is crazy. 4 mile is good extra 10 min ride. Only 5 min difference between her and the first place, so she would have won for sure. Completely amateur stuff by Ironman.

Lawrence was cruising it with a 2:28 lead at 44km. a 4:15 lead at 58km (and 5:25 over Pierré). This converts during additional (detour) distance to a 1:18 deficit on Pierré entering T2. This is in line with 4km detour and trying get back after finding herself on a dual carriageway with central barrier, generally riding at 41kph average.
Pierré is a faster runner and ran 3 minutes faster than a de-motivated Lawrence. Well done for Lawrence finishing 4th. Dede ran a 1:21!
Who knows what the signage was like, presumably at a change of direction, that the moto accompanying (ahead of) her either ignored (their part of the course done) or failed to notice.
Maybe a lesson that athletes might 'file away' is that if there are 'cones', and then 'no cones', at least question whether there was a junction back there.
This 'moto leads the lead women leader astray' happened at the Challenge Samorin race in 2021 (day after the Collins Cup) and several athletes in the front group of ?4/5 were led astray, by more than 6 minutes, costing them serious money.
As an aside, the delta between Pierré and Luis was 27 minutes, so he must have been taking it real easy.

Reminds me of the time I was first back to start/finish in a local TT and the course marshals hadn't setup at the final roundabout to the finish line some 1/4 mile away. I get there and they pretty much sprint up from their lawn chair to block the road waving me a direction, that was wrong. So.....hit them to go the right way? And they didn't run the course they permitted with USAC either.

Events have to have their shit together.

I know this is in pink, but why dont the athletes download the course onto their garmin (or other brand) head unit for turn by turn directions? Im not saying this should be what they rely on, but if your headunit tells you your off course, it will give you pause to look around and figure out wtf is going on?

As an aside, the delta between Pierré and Luis was 27 minutes, so he must have been taking it real easy. //

Why do you say that? I have always used 20 minutes as the difference between men and women in a half as the "equal" accomplishment time. On great women performances it can get down to 15 minutes, in lackluster comparisons it can be 30+ minutes. I would say Luis had a super solid effort as compared to the lead woman. And if Holly was allowed to do the legit course, it would have been 6 minutes faster and down to 21 minutes, so that would have been pretty even in efforts for both men and women..

EDIT; Just looking at Holly's times, she would have likely only won by a couple minutes or so, so more like a 25 minute delta to Luis..

I thought about doing this but after trying it out in training, it's very suboptimal. Interferes with looking at your normal screen with power/HR, and also is really distracting for the vast majority of the course where you're not going off course but it's still beeping and/or warning you about upcoming corners that you know are there already.

On a hillclimb TT where I actually tried it out, it was even worse - despite there being only 2-3 possible turnoffs, the head unit beeped at every curve in the road as if I might go off-course, when there were no side streets possible to turn onto. Superfail.

Although I hear that gravel riders do use this to good effect, would be interesting to hear from them, although I do wonder if the lower speeds on the technical sections of gravel make this more useful.

As someone late to the gravel game, I cannot really speak to using cue cards. Using my Garmin with the route loaded is so simple and convenient. No need to worry about rain, or switching between cards. As a non good swimmer, I guess I do not worry about my bike course direction in a typical triathlon as there is almost always someone in front of me (I know, do not trust others to not go off course). So, between looking at the course, maybe pre-driving it, and people in front of me I prefer to not have the route on my Garmin. Although maybe I will try it for a local sprint race where I will be going all out and need the watts less and see how it works with turn by turn directions. That way the next time I do an out of town unfamiliar race I can have knowledge on if it is a reasonable option.

Was first out of the water

Ran right by the race director and waived to her

A mile later I realized I took a wrong turn

After the race I asked her why she didn’t tell me when I waived to her

She said oh, I didn’t know you were racing. I figured you were just out running.


By the way, I actually know her she knows I live 50 miles from where the race race number on the front

Lol

I've never been in that position, but it'd be an interesting choice to have to make when the lead moto is going one direction and your Garmin is telling you to go a different way. Which would you assume is correct?

No kidding it would be a difficult choice...one might easily assume that there was a last minute change to the course that the moto was aware of but you weren't...I've certainly had courses change on race morning. That's where the whole "know the course" saying falls short.

While I am all for personal responsibility; but, unless Ironman is going to start publishing a final route file in a timely manner, what practical way is there to know a course? The low-quality course maps published on the site are not that.

I often download a course from Garmin or Strava, those are often not perfect and getting that persistent off-course notifications are incredibly annoying.

Similar ish story from awhile back. Was 3rd or 4th out of the water and after about a mile on the bike I was leading. 20ish miles into the bike I get to a major intersection w/ no volunteers in sight and a police officer sitting in his cruiser. I was pretty sure (and was correct) that the course went straight through. But seeing an uncontrolled intersection instilled enough doubt that I went back and asked the officer which way the course went (and then got stuck at the light).

I was kinda frustrated after that.

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All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. ~Gandalf

I think this Lead Moto stuff and it all being on the athlete to know the course rather than the Moto is complete bollocks and just a cop out.
I agree athletes should know the course, and when I was bike racing as a junior we got marshalled off a wrong turn down a massive hill which took about 7-8 mins for someone to catch us to let us know they had misdirected us.
But this is professional sport, and when riding in a full aero position as the lead rider, with a moto that you cannot exactly communicate with, it can't all be on the rider to know that the moto has taken a wrong turn. IM needs to take full responsibility for this. Personally, I think they should work out the time difference, figure out what place she would have been, and at least match the prize money for where she most likely would have ended up.

Behind the scenes that is what *usually* happens when an race messes up in this type of manner. It isn't "official", etc., but it'll just be their way of correcting the wronged athlete.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Thanks Brooks, nice to hear.

yeah, it can be quite tricky to create a route that exactly matches a known course, to get it exactly right based off the vague maps IM provide is nonsense. you can't know the course well enough to be self-reliant based on those maps - you might get the general idea that something doesn't seem right but not to the level of confidence to go against guidance you're being given, particularly not in the heat of the moment. even if you've done the race before (as Holly apparently had) they often make little tweaks to the course that you would never pick up from the course maps.

if the lead moto can't follow the course reliably then how can competing athletes be expected to?

I would like to know where and when she went wrong.

I've done this race in 2018,19, and yesterday and aside from the first 3km the course was near on exactly the same as every other year.

And like every year the turns, u-turns and entire course were sign posted and coned off.

I would like to know where and when she went wrong.//

You mean where the lead race Moto went wrong? Unless you are the leader in a race, it is hard to understand the myriad of things that can go wrong during a race. Then of course when they do, it usually gets fixed quickly, so people can then say it was a beautiful, well marked course, like you have here..


IT is always the RD responsibility to mark their courses so that "everyone" on race day can follow them easily. When you lead Moto misses a turn, a Moto that should know the course that day, then probably something went wrong.

I agree that the moto messed up.

But, the fact that there are 3-4 volunteers on every corner, police at every major intersection, and a cone every 5m for 90km. It really is a well marked course.

I'm in a bit of disbelief that you can go 4 miles off course before figuring it out.

She ended up on a “motorway with traffic” and was then trying to find her own way back, so the moto may have just ridden off. Don’t think a u-turn sounded possible.

If the rider is a Bahraini I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes this morning.

My memory might be a little foggy, but hasn’t this happened at this race before? But wasn’t it a group of riders who were taken off course?

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Instagram | Team Kiwami North America

To @Kingy who says "I agree that the moto messed up. But, the fact that there are 3-4 volunteers on every corner, police at every major intersection, and a cone every 5m for 90km. It really is a well marked course."
Is/was this a "Fact" or are you surmising? So if that well marked and changes of direction volunteer marshalled, how could the moto 'possibly' mess up?
In Barain maybe this would be better put as: If the rider isn't a Bahraini I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes this morning." Bahraini national? Not a problem.

i have no opinion on this either way
but why does team bahrain 13 exist ... to cover up the death of Bahrainis . there was really no need to call it 13 otherwise.

http://www.trstriathlon.triroost.com/...-unfortunate-number/
2015 article with partial list of athletes: "The team’s lineup s a who’s who of contemporary Ironman greats, including current World Champion Sebastian Kienle, Jodie Swallow, Javier Gomez, Daniela Ryf, James Cunnama, Joe Gambles, Luke Bell, Caroline Steffen, and Terenzo Bozzone."
https://bahrainvictorious13.com/about/
I see Gentle and Kanute left the 'team' last year.
So now Blummenfelt, Mislawchuk, Parker, Luis, Brownlee A, Beaugrand, Ryf, Plese, Taylor-Brown, Shoeman, Lawrence, Frodeno, Skipper and HH are the team's athletes.

but why does team bahrain 13 exist ... to cover up the death of Bahrainis . there was really no need to call it 13 otherwise. //

The sheik is a pretty avid triathlete himself, and we have seem over and over what these billionaire fans can do for the sport and its athletes. Sure looks like it was meant to be some sort of cover up, but one second on google and Baharin 13 shows it did not work. So if that was the goal, well that ship sailed and we are left with extreme fandom that keeps the team going, or just some country pride too. And looking at the list they have had since inception, it must be quite a big check they write every payday for this group, cannot even imagine.


I wonder who is managing the team in this regard? Would be fun to hear some of the salaries, bonuses, and perks the team enjoys. We had a similar team back in the early 80's, the JDavid triathlon team. Tons of cash flowing, all to come crashing down years later as the most elaborate pyramid scheme of all time(later to be surpassed big time by Bernie Madoff)

Very much a fact. Like I said, I raced yesterday and in 2018 and 2019. The bike course is coned off the entire way. 60 of the 90km is in the inner most lane of a 3 lane highway and everything else is very straight forward. Sign posted with volunteers (or police at major intersections). U-turns are "dead-ends" with no possible way of going through them.

I don't know exactly where she went off but I can only think of 1 or 2 places where it could've probably happened but even those I'm surprised with. Honestly the lack of cones would've given it away straight away so who knows.

Thank you for the first hand assessment. As I said early in the thread (? post #4), a lesson for the swim strong pro athletes (or amateurs where there's no pro field) liable to be leading the bike: if lots of cones turns to 'no cones' be alert to the possibility you are off course.

he actually wrote in purple, which means he is half joking...

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https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

from what i understand, Holly realised the error pretty quickly but having been led on to a road with a median barrier, traffic and no traffic management, she had to keep riding to find somewhere she could turn around.

i belive its still Chris Mc Cormack managing the team. .