I'm glad someone else called this out!

Great video Dan. My race experience mimicked what you articulated in the video; though my finish time was slower :) My wife's experience was even closer to your wife's. Congratulations on a great effort out there.

Job well done!

Year after year records are broken here. Are the bike and/or run courses short?

By "year after year" do you mean the men's record that took 7 years to break or the women's one that took 12 years?

It's short but not by much, except when it was shortened in 2021. Certainly within the range of IM branded races, which is why TriRating let's them stand without an asterisk.

respectfully Lurker, I hope you take your ideas to IM and continue to run the brand into the ground and leave Roth well enough alone. Would Kona have 30000 signups in 30 minutes? I don't know. Year after year? I doubt it. And if you have raced in Kona (I have four times) you will know that for the most part locals are indifferent at best to IM and a very significant portion are absolutely against the race, partly in light of how IM ignores/offers only platitudes to the local community in lieu of real engagement.

If you are worried about Roth making money, you know very little about the event and the expo. Roth was initially part of Challenge until its owner/RD decided to sell Challenge and just keep Roth and run it as his passion. Challenge's largest event now is Challenge Taiwan with 113/226 and 5150 distances and a boat load of kids races that bring in over 6000 athletes and sold out in one hour. Compare that to IM which is now rolling down slots to its "World Championship" in Nice to anyone who finished and also hosts events with ever lower numbers. In the Taiwan market specifically, Ironman Taiwan had 344 people sign up for its 5th year and ended the event(first year was about 1400 and had declined to under 700 in the last even before the pandemic) versus the kinds of numbers and energy Challenge Taiwan is creating. Ironman is no longer the standard in athlete experience or even making money. I understand economics, but without a product people want to buy, any price is too high and Roth certainly offers a product people want to buy.

Roth was born out of IM's money first athlete last attitude that has risen to new peaks under Messick to the point of self-destructive implosion of the brand.

I think it's known that the bike/run courses are just a touch short. When you're close to the exact distances, you're really only seeing a benefit from a slightly short course if you've nailed pacing & catch a great weather day. One wrong move pacing and it doesn't really matter if the bike is 110 miles or 112 miles if you start going backwards. Part of the run in Roth is on trail & it can get pretty hot there. The bike has a good amount of elevation gain.

I think it would be good for the sport to establish world records just for marketing/coverage purposes but course records make more sense (also how do you compare eras with improved technology?). Blu went faster than Ditlev but had an assisted swim. Then how do you judge what Gustav did in the heat/humidity in Kona? Maybe create some sort of uniform standard where the swim can't be assisted and the swim/bike/run courses have to be within X of the standard distance to count for records. But you'll still have performances that are slower that are worth something a lot better on a different course on a different day. That's just the nature of the sport with such long distances involved and with a lot of races taking place in trash conditions. I think PTO, if you trust their algorithm, is onto something by trying to compare performances with a points based system. For fans and in an effort to grow the sport, however, it's a lot easier to say Ryf set the World Record versus scored 98.88 points.

No - AG, across both genders.