NordicSkier wrote:
Good point. That is common practice at a lot of races now.
Maybe just get rid of body marking.
Body marking for when people are in the swim is pretty vital. Hopefully something that you'll never need to have used, but for open water then a non-negotiable.
The calf marking if done properly is important for mass/wave start races so people know on the run if the person in front is the same category. However, this isn't safety related, so I'd be comfortable losing that.
In all honesty there's not a lot of tri rules that aren't about safety. The ones people moaned about most are:-
1) headphones in transition (it's a blanket rule, often there are people racking whilst racing from earlier waves are happening, just way easier to police if it's a blanket rule than dealing with the "but I didn't see the sign saying it was live now"
2) Chin straps way too loose - obvious
3) Unplugged road bars - $10,000 of bike with zipps, powermeter, etc etc but can't afford $1 for bungs - same people turned-up every fortnight in the season with same unplugged bung.
4) Grabbing drinks from parents / coach - what about the kids / competitors without the support - no outside assistance. So this one is about fairness not safety, unless it was about people using unsafe locations for informal aid stations, but I never really saw that.
5) Drafting - its about safety. No drafting is safer. Triathletes drafting on open roads is not safe (or legal in some locations).
Also re the fine for the UCI bands. About 2003 then there was a British lady triathlete (Jodie Swallow) that had an issue at a race where the logo size was judged to be too large. So a bit like UCI, strict rules on uniform, and you can see why specifying a max logo size for televised events makes sense for sponsorship reasons. But in this case the issue arose as the logo was on her top, and for anatomical reasons then when she put the standard kit on then the logo exceeded the permitted size, where others in the team it didn't. For very predictable reasons then it got far more media attention than the majority of drafting penalties I gave out......