KonaCoffee wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
As for the 16:45 cut off in Kona, I think the integrity of the women's race is more important than the whether some of us age groupers can finish in 17 or 16:45. I think this affects 5-10 older athletes versus the pro women's competition. Perhaps a provision could be made for athletes over 70 to start right after pro women and each of them can have a kayak escort BEHIND them so that it is impossible to swim over them. Then it is win win for all!
How about if WTC just take their race and leave town instead.
Well they did that to Oahu, 30 years ago and moved to Kona, , so I guess now you could kick them out of town and go elsewhere, and bring Challenge in to run the show. That might actually be a greater test of what athletes care about. I think in this case, most would do the Challenge race in Kona vs say the WTC Ironman race in Maui or back in Oahu.
Seriously though are you more bothered by the 17 hour cut off at Kona becoming 16:45 (they just said cut off at Kona, not at every IM), or would you like to see the pro women get a fair race. Personally I care more about the pro women's race than the race to beat the cut off, but I guess that is just me. I'd rather that the women's race not be diluted just to accommodate 5-10 people at the end of the race. I think they can be accommodated another way (as I suggested) without messing up the pro women's race. That's my 2 cents as a fan, who will be among the couple of 100,000 tuning into the pro race in 2 weeks, but will be fast asleep for the cut off.
I don't really get the animosity towards going from that position to wanting to kick them out of town, but i am not local and like most local locations, we the athletes tend to only see and care about what happens on race week. I am sure there are many frustrations outside of that week that you need to contend with that we don't see, so perhaps providing visibility into how WTC and us are screwing all that up, might be enlightening and make us all behave better when we are around.