Maca944 wrote:
I did Challenge Barcelona in 2012. At the time it was possible to choose not to draft, but with the number of athletes on the course this year it's getting pretty hard. I'd love to go back there since the venue is great and the bike course is very fast (even without drafting), but not with the current number of athletes participating and nobody caring about the blatant drafting going on.
Below a picture from @wheelworx to give an indication of the situation.
I posted Natascha Badmann's 4:40 time in another thread. Which provides a benchmark of how fast this course is without drafting (assume she was riding pretty much solo out of the pro women wave....Yvonne Van Vlierken went around 4:46). Also in 45-49 Holger Lorenz who, at one point lead the bike in Kona (when he raced pro around 15 years ago) rode 4:33. Holger swam 53 min, so I assume his riding was largely solo ahead of the big packs. Those provide a window into how fast the course is. David Plese rode 4:25. Not crazy fast for pro men, just a touch over 40 kph. Per Bittner and Anton Blokhin both swam 47 and biked 4:19. They would have benefited from each other's presence, but not like the age group field. So let's take Plesse and Van Vlierken as examples of how fast this course is. If you put Marino or Kienle on this course, they probably ride 4:10, maybe faster.
With 2600 people on the course and a rolling start, the easy solution is to slow down the rolling start and meter out the entry into the water. Basically if you stretch 2600 people over 26 minutes, that is 100 people into the water per minute or over 2 per second. If you can get it down to 1 per second over around 50 minutes, most of the drafting issue would dramatically decrease. At the end of the day, it is related to rider density out of T1 in a competitive field. Lower the density into the water and it gets lower coming out of T1. At IM Tahoe we had 1200 or so into the water in around 15 minutes. The first part of the course is pretty flat for the first 2 hours, so it could easily be a draft fest, but with the low rider density, it was clear sailing.
As you said with 1300 at Challenge Barcelona you could avoid drafting, so it's proven that on the same course with less rider density you can have a fair race. Ironman just needs to meter out the departure rate in the rolling starts and you can have a good race in Barcelona. Then hang around for a few days either before or after for some UEFA Champion's league action and taking in some culture and it sounds like the perfect destination event. I am hopeful they can resolve the rider density issue given the move to rolling start format. At Tahoe they did a much better job metering us out into the water than in Boulder.