Appreciate the time to do a write up. Good stuff!!

Quick take #1. Burying Sam in the swim would be tough. He was ~3' down and won by over 7'. Nobody is going to put 10' on him. At this point, 70.3 distance, Sam would have to falter in order to get beat. I want to see him race this distance against Blu and Hayden Wilde. Throw Lionel in for grins and tickles.

Good question, here's a bunch for comparison. I flipped between strava data and device data to see if it was out of wack and it was consistent.

2024 half - 875 ft
2023 half - 784 ft
2022 half worlds - 757 ft *
2022 Full - 1594ft
2021 half - 1010ft
2021 half worlds - 1092ft

*this should be a little more gain than 2022 worlds though I'd think because we did a little climb near the golf course entrance

Penticton isn't a Series race, however lovely and a living/surviving legend (and I appreciate the reason you might float that).
I'd be surprised if he chose to race an IM just 'for fun': to be meaningful surely he would want to race a stacked field? And racing anywhere except an IM Pro Series race will be a 'B' field (racing one would take prize money from the the neo-pros who need it).
Long's two top 70.3s plus 2700+ points at Taupo means he could rack up 12000 points with two more 70.3s.
With his contracted T100 events, whilst he needs to race 3 more times, plus GF, he only needs one more podium in the regular season races. That determines when he might slot in an IM (or heaven help us two IMs) or two more 70.3s, or one of each.
So which T100 offers his best chance of good points? Probably not SF with its swim and climbing, and van Riel there btw.
London looks good with Ibiza a possible, but with an enhanced level of post Olympic competition. Las Vegas will lose all the Kona bound athletes but that'll mean a wedge of wildcard weapons to beat. So let's target London (end July) with Las Vegas as the standby, and Dubai as the kick return.
He has multiple North American 70.3s to choose from in the next 7 weeks so that's not a determining factor. But IMs?
If only one then IMLP is the obvious choice (21 July) but that would mean shelving London as a 'top finish' target.
Frankfurt on 18 August is another, but likely the winner there will be further ahead, and 'every second counts'. And he doesn't travel well. Doesn't clash with anything, though.
The numbers (tl;dr probably not worth it):
A set of five scores, including one good (for him) IM raises the IM Pro Series potential score to 14,500 which will be top 10 (my estimate) and remember #8 only pays $20k.
But an athlete who places average #20 when completing two IMs plus Kona (30 minutes down in all three) plus a couple of 70.3s (15 minutes down x 2), scores 13,800.
The max possible score (Ryf 2018 dominance) is 21,500. We might expect Lange to score about 19,000 points (now on 6519, +4800 (Frankfurt), +1900 (10 mins down in a second 70.3), +5800 (Kona)) and not go to Taupo (he has no slot nor likely to get). Who else, as a benchmark for whether it's worth Long trying to score 5 times?
We might expect Mignon to score over 18,000 points (now on 4641, +4400 (Frankfurt), +4000 (two 70.3s), +5400 (Kona)) and not go to Taupo.
I assume Blummenfelt is going to validate his AQ for Taupo after Cagliari (guess a gentle training day @ Les Sables) so he with only four races could score 15,300 (2000+4700(Frankfurt)+5800(Kona)+2800(Taupo))
Of course the current IM Pro Series standings include only NA races (x 3) and the European contenders have IM Vitoria and IM Frankfurt to show their cards before Kona. So we have a skewed insight to the likely players.
I shall cross post this into another (non-event specific) thread.

Serious question, was the 2024 bike course yesterday meaningfully different than it was for 70.3 Worlds 2021?

Iden rode 1:58 that day and ran 1:11 on a (subjectively) harder run.

Remember, he is all in on T100. He would be racing an IM to qualify for Kona.

Penticton isn't a Series race, however lovely and a living/surviving legend (and I appreciate the reason you might float that).
I'd be surprised if he chose to race an IM just 'for fun': to be meaningful surely he would want to race a stacked field? And racing anywhere except an IM Pro Series race will be a 'B' field (racing one would take prize money from the the neo-pros who need it).
Long's two top 70.3s plus 2700+ points at Taupo means he could rack up 12000 points with two more 70.3s.
With his contracted T100 events, whilst he needs to race 3 more times, plus GF, he only needs one more podium in the regular season races. That determines when he might slot in an IM (or heaven help us two IMs) or two more 70.3s, or one of each.
So which T100 offers his best chance of good points? Probably not SF with its swim and climbing, and van Riel there btw.
London looks good with Ibiza a possible, but with an enhanced level of post Olympic competition. Las Vegas will lose all the Kona bound athletes but that'll mean a wedge of wildcard weapons to beat. So let's target London (end July) with Las Vegas as the standby, and Dubai as the kick return.
He has multiple North American 70.3s to choose from in the next 7 weeks so that's not a determining factor. But IMs?
If only one then IMLP is the obvious choice (21 July) but that would mean shelving London as a 'top finish' target.
Frankfurt on 18 August is another, but likely the winner there will be further ahead, and 'every second counts'. And he doesn't travel well. Doesn't clash with anything, though.
The numbers (tl;dr probably not worth it):
A set of five scores, including one good (for him) IM raises the IM Pro Series potential score to 14,500 which will be top 10 (my estimate) and remember #8 only pays $20k.
But an athlete who places average #20 when completing two IMs plus Kona (30 minutes down in all three) plus a couple of 70.3s (15 minutes down x 2), scores 13,800.
The max possible score (Ryf 2018 dominance) is 21,500. We might expect Lange to score about 19,000 points (now on 6519, +4800 (Frankfurt), +1900 (10 mins down in a second 70.3), +5800 (Kona)) and not go to Taupo (he has no slot nor likely to get). Who else, as a benchmark for whether it's worth Long trying to score 5 times?
We might expect Mignon to score over 18,000 points (now on 4641, +4400 (Frankfurt), +4000 (two 70.3s), +5400 (Kona)) and not go to Taupo.
I assume Blummenfelt is going to validate his AQ for Taupo after Cagliari (guess a gentle training day @ Les Sables) so he with only four races could score 15,300 (2000+4700(Frankfurt)+5800(Kona)+2800(Taupo))
Of course the current IM Pro Series standings include only NA races (x 3) and the European contenders have IM Vitoria and IM Frankfurt to show their cards before Kona. So we have a skewed insight to the likely players.
I shall cross post this into another (non-event specific) thread.

2021 had km or so false flat out of Sand Hollow parking lot on chip seal where now we race in sand hollow on fast asphalt. So faster now in this section.

2021 had an out and back chipseal road after leaving the sand hollow sand dune climb that was a hard u-turn, so that's a little slower than the u-uturn we make on the highway outside of sand hollow now. Plus a similar out and back in 2021 into the town of Washington that was a little bumpy and slowed things a bit. But 70.3 worlds had bike catchers earlier on Tabernacle street so you didn't have such a long slow down to get into t2 in 2021. So maybe we could say this bike course was 30s-1min faster.

Gustav of '21 vs Sam of '24, Sam still loses, but by 1 minute instead of 4 if you ask me.

2021 had km or so false flat out of Sand Hollow parking lot on chip seal where now we race in sand hollow on fast asphalt. So faster now in this section.

2021 had an out and back chipseal road after leaving the sand hollow sand dune climb that was a hard u-turn, so that's a little slower than the u-uturn we make on the highway outside of sand hollow now. Plus a similar out and back in 2021 into the town of Washington that was a little bumpy and slowed things a bit. But 70.3 worlds had bike catchers earlier on Tabernacle street so you didn't have such a long slow down to get into t2 in 2021. So maybe we could say this bike course was 30s-1min faster.

Gustav of '21 vs Sam of '24, Sam still loses, but by 1 minute instead of 4 if you ask me.

2021 was also a WC, with folks peaking for the event. 2024 was an early/mid season race that Sam was going into after doing a number of IM/T100 races prior.

So based on this even the t100 fields are bad haha.

Yesterday Sam said he IS doing T100 San Francisco.

I have not tracked it, but I assume Penticton is an Ironman Pro race, but perhaps not part of the Pro Series but does it offer pro slots to go to Kona? If so, Penticton is easy travel given it is in Sam's time zone and maybe an easy Kona slot and if he has all the T100 points he needs, then he does Penticton as a training day gets his Kona slot and races penticton for IM Pro series points.

I have not skin in the game on Penticton, Sam was the one who mentioned it as a potential event

This is a tremendous point - Sam rode and ran like he did for shits and gigs, not for a title

Taupo slots to:
Costes, Wilkowiecki, Sandi, Andrie(#12)
Metzler, Frades, Simpson, McBride
Disappointing to see no coverage of Hamilton running up into second. He passed Quenet and Sperl at about 13km and never looked back.
Did we even see him finish? With commentators focusing on Quenet, Laundry and Costes (in the mix for #3, 100 seconds back).
Hering tried and tried, closing to 22 seconds at 14km but Salthouse looked as if she'd held a bit back for that last 7km. And Findlay eased off massively/sensibly in the last 5km.
Hering shared she will be racing IM Hamburg: it'd be her first IM for 9 years! IM Pro Series influence.
Findlay thinks she might enjoy IMMT, next year - "we'll see!"


Think Long jumps to #1 on the PTO Rankings (with this score = about 98 with the 5% bonus) and as Blummenfelt drops off the plot (has to count his #35 finish in Lahti).
And Findlay (with 92.6) climbs a place, above Philipp.

Why does he get a 5% bonus I thought you only get that for full distance races?