To play Devils Advocate: as a world championship the make up of the Kona field is decidedly slanted towards Americans (where there are the most races and hence slots). If we are searching for true equality then there should be equal slots for each continent / gender / race etc.

It's not perfect but allocating slots based on participation is the best option available.

I don't know, guess I'm just another sexist white male. (Who selfishly thinks that there's nothing morally unjust about proportionality. There, I said it. This isn't women's suffrage. Nobody is being denied anything based on their gender, race, etc.)

I think you're wrong here. And on this particular point - "And age groupers don't really get any benefit from going." - you are REALLY wrong. You do know that people tattoo themselves with the logo of this company? I've heard countless stories at races and elsewhere of, "well I wasn't going to ever qualify, so I'm on my way to 12 Ironmans so I can get in through the legacy program." If you discount how important Kona is to age groupers on a relative basis, you are sorely mistaken. I'd actually say that - assuming that being a professional actually means earning your living from sport - the whole idea of 5Q is crazy. Why add another 15 slots of people who won't get paid. That is totally irrational. It's precisely because Kona does NOT impact people's livelihoods that this whole topic is so emotional. Emotion is a huge part of this. The allure of Kona is significant here. And that emotional side is at least as strong for age-groupers. If you think that age-groupers somehow care about Kona less because they are not pros, you couldn't be more wrong. And that's a massively important part of what is going on here.

This is part of what I was trying to say in my admittedly too long post. For 80% (well, slightly less; it'd be 80% if slots were equal) of the pro field, it costs money too. And it's debatable how much money someone really makes outside of the top-5. Because there's opportunity cost; 6-10 makes good money, but not better money than winning an Ironman, which is what kind of performance you need to turn in to get 6-10. So, really, for all except the top-5 on either side, Kona costs money. I'd say it's a wash for 6-10. Still, there's no debating that 10 men and 10 women get paid. That's it. And NOBODY has a bonus for "qualifying."

It's also really hard to say that people's livelihoods depend on it. I think that Steve Johnson (coach on here) made the case about how important it is for his coaching business that he qualifies. I'd say it's at least as important to him as it is for many of the pros, the majority of whom will derive no benefit (monetarily or otherwise) from going to Kona.

I also think you underestimate the age-group opposition to pro equality, simply because people who are opposed to it don't really do so publicly. Now, as I said before, I'm not saying that's right. But I think - I know - that there is more opposition to the idea of 5Q than what you may see.

Basically, YOU don't think it's a slippery slope because YOU are not asking for parity. But don't think that means "nobody" is asking for it. People are crazy about what they will do to get to Kona. Haven't you learned that year after year from watching the broadcast.

Whether you want to admit it or not, this is a real issue - what you do with age groupers if pros go to strict equality. I think the only way to solve it is by making the pro race dramatically more distinct - far fewer slots and also a race where everyone gets paid. I think the overlap of pros and age-groupers at the bottom half of the field is a big part of why this argument actually does exist. With 50 pros of each gender, 40 of whom aren't getting paid, I think it's a real challenge to say that - on the age-group side - you are just going to stick with proportional equality. It's especially problematic when the arguments for 5Q apply equally well - if not better - to the age-group field: it's the "right" thing, it's "good for the sport," it will promote women's participation, etc. You need to get away from those and shift to arguments like, "we want it to be a true championship at the highest levels of the sport that showcases the absolute pinnacle of what Ironman racing is." You do that with a small championship race where everyone gets paid. That argument supports that approach. But, crucially, it also supports continuing proportional equality on the age-group side.

Pro sports are rarely about morality. If you make the moral argument, you open pandora's box. Better to focus on the spectacle aspect of it.

This is why I think it's folly for some of the 5Q supporters to reference Title IX. Title IX was - crucially, in my opinion - about amateur athletics.

There's no conscientiable way to support a disparate application of morality. That's pretty much at the heart of the 5Q movement. The problem with that approach is that it very clearly does open up the discussion of how do you then defend proportional equality on the age-group side. You can't.

If double-standards are wrong, then they are wrong. You can't say that double standards for men/women are morally wrong but they are right for pro/age-group. I think you have to at least admit that's not clear cut. In other words, even if you don't have trouble with that double standard, you have to admit that it is a double standard, which is precisely what you have been railing against all along.

That's why I said that the primary issue is really "how many pros should be in Kona." You have to figure out how big (or small) that number can be before you open yourself up to striking down one double standard simply to enforce a different one.

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

Slowman wrote:

andrew, and his team, believes in proportional representation

To me, that is the issue. Imagine some famous people saying something like:


"All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have a proportional opportunity to develop our talents." JFK


"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created proportional" Martin Luther King


"In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are proportional, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors" Bertrand Russell

Yeah, like imagine if the landmark legislation on gender equality in sports (Title IX) actually said something like, ""All such assistance should be available on a substantially proportional basis to the number of male and female participants in the institution's athletic program.""

Oh wait. It does...

http://www2.ed.gov/...league-20100420.html

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

right I forgot the early years were ITU races. But now that I think about it I remember some of the HUGE paydays it produced.

I know it had a full field, had a pro in it who went through the qual process. But yes the 5150 had many issues but there are some threads on that already.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

That's aiming pretty low then - the International Olympic Association says: "to encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women"

i look at this kind of like the U.S. congress. in the senate we have true equality. 50 states, and every state gets 2 senators regardless of the size of the cohort. the house of representatives has proportional representation.

i don't see either of these as better. they are 2 expressions of equality. do you think the house is an example of inequality?

i am sympathetic to your point of view. i think jordan is as well. i'm pretty sure jordan, like me, thought this through hard, and continues to think it through, to look for blind spots, to point our gazes inwardly, to see if there's a moral shoring up we need to undergo.

but i think jordan thinks, as i do, that these are competing expressions of equality. neither is bad. neither can be bad if they are both attempts to engender equalilty. maybe there's a way to meld them, as we do in the U.S. congress.

what i think is unhelpful is to deny the validity or existence of one of these expressions.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Just because he states it so emphatically does not make him correct.

I agree with you.

In the AG ranks it's not perceived as an issue because there is a clear mathematical formula for determining how many male and female slots are allotted per division. No-one views it as sexist because, if say, 1500 of a 2000 person field were female, then women would get more KQ slots at that race. Anyone can sign up for an AG entry in a WTC race.

But at Kona two things are different for the pros (still agreeing with you).

1. There seems not to be such an objective, mathematical formula being used to determine the number of male and female pros. 50 and 35 are round, seemingly arbitrary numbers. That creates a perception problem. If, instead, it was the top 10% of all ranking WTC pros, then it's a more sound, objective, proportional representation argument. [Then, as a side argument, you might suggest WTC should pay more money to attract more pros, particularly women, but this then gets into other issues, like the fact that triathlon is frankly just not a popular sport vs say golf or football.]

Side note... at the US Nationals the top 18 males and females from each age group are eligible to compete for Team USA at the AG Worlds. Given the higher numbers of men competing in the sport, this makes it relatively harder for men to qualify for Team USA. It's interesting that no-one seems to complain about this either. Again, likely because it is seen as 'fair' at least from an objectivity standpoint.

2. At Kona, we are referring to the professional world championship of a sport (albeit a private organization running its own 'world championship'). Yes, there may be more pro males out there than pro females, but from an outsider-looking-in perspective, it is odd to see 50 men line up for the championship, but only 35 women. If that happened at the swimming world championships, it would raise eyebrows.

To be honest, my knowledge of the way that the US government works comes from House of Cards. And my impression of how equal the US is comes from the news on my TV and reading threads on here about paying for ambulances and emergency room treatment. As such, I can't really comment.

But I do believe that in life and in sport equality of opportunity is important.

"At Kona, we are referring to the professional world championship of a sport"

in my opinion, this is the argument. there are three arguments in favor of gender equality of numbers among the pros: advocacy (it'll attract more females to the sport); equality; and that it's a WC.

i don't think the advocacy argument has been successfully made, at least to my satisfaction. if the goal was to get more women in the sport, there would be a number of strategies you might consider, and adding 15 pro women to the field might bear fruit, might not.

equality, that's a better argument. but there are two competing expressions of equality. Dead Keen above says that MLK did not advocate for proportional equality, but he absolutely did. MLK's vision of equality was that we all are judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin, but he did not advocate for equal power sharing slices, one slice per race. he simply wanted every black man or woman to have an equal chance at the american dream, so, if 11 percent of america is black then, ideally, eventually, 11 percent of the votes cast would be black, 11 percent of CEOs, doctors, teachers, prisoners, bag people, lawyers, soldiers, would be black. that's proportional equality, so, probably not good to trot MLK out in favor of numerical equality.

the third argument, that kona is a WC, it's hard to get around that one. that really does call for genders being numbers-equal. however, this opens up the argument of how many pros ought to be on the starting line in a WC. and, if it's a WC, how deep should the money pay? these are questions that i think ought to animate the pros. i'm surprised the WC argument doesn't get more oxygen.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

 maybe there's a way to meld them, as we do in the U.S. congress. //

Pros= senate
Ag'ers= house

I solved it in 4 words!!

I have to say this whole "pros are in the spotlight" is a bunch of bunk. Sorry - you can't compare Lance or Tiger to Macca or Crowie since Ironman is a total fringe sport. Even after the NBC broadcast is over the general public will hardly remember who won or even who was in contention along the way. Yes, fans of Ironman might, but they are totally obsessed and spend time arguing on ST, but they are few and far between. Also, the everyday triathlete does not "sign-up" based on professionals. That is another lost argument since the non-pros sign up months in advance. In 15 years of racing I have never thought once about a pro racing at my race. Sure, they are there, but they don't really impact or do much for me.

Here is, I suppose, my underlying point that this boils down to:

I am more than fine drawing a line in the sand between professional equality and age-group proportionality as it comes to Kona slots. Why? Because in order for triathlon to be taken seriously as a professional sport, we should follow the model that we see in other professional sports; I continually draw back to tennis (as the events take place at the same time): the draw is the draw. There are equal professional slots, no matter the membership of the ATP or WTA.

I feel that it is a continual undervaluation of the professional field that leads to Mr. Messick using the proportionality argument. The professional field is the best of our best, period. To call it a world championship for professional athletes, without giving equal access, in my opinion is incorrect.

I see no reason to not decouple the fields. As I mentioned in the commentary on your op-ed, I'll be one to make the argument that equal slots for age-groupers is not necessarily the best approach. I'd like to see a different qualifying system for age-groupers in the first place (age group based time qualifying standards, moving away from the 5 year increments in AGs, Kona slots consolidated at specific events are all different ones I've thought about).

But I find it easy to separate out the age-group argument from the professional one. I find the IM position on proportionality far more plausible when it comes to the AG field.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Sure, they are there, but they don't really impact or do much for me. //

You live in a bubble. It is quite possible that the only reason the race you do exists, is because of pros, past and present. So the distinct possibility that you are even doing a particular race because of pros, I would say that is impact full to you.

Speaking of MLK, I wonder what he would think of this:

"Former Rugby World Cup champions South Africa will include seven non-white players in 23-man match day squads in the run up to the Rugby World Cup.

South Africa's Springboks have been traditionally white teams and the South African Rugby Union have now launched a new commitment to racially transform the game.

The new Strategic Transformation Plan (STP) aims to have non-whites making up half of all domestic and national teams by 2019.

At least two of the seven non-whites in the 2015 squads must be black Africans, the South African Rugby Union (SARU) said, distinguishing them from players of mixed race who have long played a role in Springbok teams.

Including seven non-whites will be a challenge for Springboks coach Heyneke Meyer, though, because were he to pick a starting XV now it would probably include only one black African and two mixed race players.

That would mean four of the eight replacements having to be non-white."

link to story:
http://www.superxv.com/...bok-team-from-now-on

"I see no reason to not decouple the fields. As I mentioned in the commentary on your op-ed, I'll be one to make the argument that equal slots for age-groupers is not necessarily the best approach."

i am sympathetic to your view. i think there probably will be equality in numbers in kona, but not because of the equality argument, more because of the WC argument. i agree that the pros have just barely enough to survive (notwithstanding the cars they drive) and that more can be done by the race org to make the existence of a pro athlete better.

i just think that the "fix" that is far, far and away more urgent is the depth of the money paid. because it is so hard to get to kona; because it requires so much of an investment just to get to kona (and i mean the investment in getting to the races that qualify you to go to kona); there ought to be a softer landing for those who honor the race org for a year of focus, yet fall outside the top-10 in the race in kona.

but as to your view, as i told you before, if you don't want fracking in the central valley of california, it's not enough that you say it on behalf of the farmers, or the sierra club. what you want is for THEM to stand up and say it, and to make the case. it's fine that you're willing to make the case for a bifurcation between how pros and AGers qualify. what i'm hoping for is for TriEqual to stand up and make a reasoned, detailed, expression for why they would not stand behind a similar ask by a cohort of female AGers.

i know that you don't think the TriEqual leadership should need to do so. i just disagree. these ladies are professionals, they're lawyers, they're PhDs, they're smart. they're capable. they're equipped. they can cut their own firewood on this, and i hope that they will, which will make their case that much more compelling, and put more pressure on ironman.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Ironically, it read a very good article about how the senate has outlived it's usefulness and that we should scrap it in favor of a total proportional legislature. I didn't agree with it (and sadly can't find it), but it was very interesting as a thought experiment.

It was a lot of the arguments you might expect against that sort of representation, especially in light of how divisive government has become. But the basic gist was that because the geographical regions dividing states are so arbitrary, it's absurd that the 50MM people of California can be stonewalled on something by the 500K residents of Wyoming.

I suppose we could defend the idea of the Senate and the House, but that'd be relying on the wisdom of old, white men, which would seem to run counter to the direction of this thread...

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"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via." - Seneca | rappstar.com | FB - Rappstar Racing | IG - @jordanrapp

And it's good for the sport when only 32 finished last year in the female race? The 32nd finisher was 11:32, 1157th overall. Equivalent placement yielded the finishers in the many age groups as faster, and even the men's 50-54 was in at 10:31 and 706th overall. You think that brings more female racers with publicity? I think the opposite. The percentage model seems way more fair and true, same for age groupers AND pros.

Good corporations make occasional mistakes, but then they listen to their customers, admit mistakes quickly, and fix them, often by adopting the changes proposed by their customers or clients.

Bad corporations make mistakes, then double down on stupid and invent all sorts of BS reasons for sticking to their course of action. About 99% of time it's someone's ego up at the top won't let them admit they are wrong.

Ironically, it read a very good article about how the senate has outlived it's usefulness and that we should scrap it in favor of a total proportional legislature. I didn't agree with it (and sadly can't find it), but it was very interesting as a thought experiment. //

No worries, they have been writing those articles for a couple 100 years. And you can find the same tone in articles on how the house is fixed, gerrymandering and all. As has been expressed here on many occasions, there are good arguments for both sides. So in my mind, what is the easiest way out of this thorn in WTC's side? It is not going away, so will have to be dealt with on a constant basis, until there is some resolution that satisfies most people. It seems very clear to me that they ought to up to 50 the womens starters, who and how many will argue with that? On the other hand, not doing that, well you can see how many and how virulent the opposition is to that. Just change it and move on, it is picking a scab over and over right now.

Using Kona finish time, with the stakes on the line (either make Top 10 or don't get paid) dictating that it is far more likely that someone is going to overreach and blow up, as the defense argument for the status quo, is to use poor data.

Is it somehow more valuable that men DNF at a far higher rate? (17 men DNFd vs 4 women). Only 36 men finished last year. Is that same value with Andreas Raelart, who finished in 10:49:09 and was 859th overall? Mind you, the last place FPRO finished closer to the winner (2:32 behind) than Raelart did (2:35).

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I think it's ironic that people are holding up tennis as a paragon of virtue. Yes women get equal places and now get equal prize money - but only play 3 sets not 5? What's that all about? After all we know from our sport that women certainly have the endurance!

As a side note (and following on from something Dan said earlier) prize money for Wimbledon (which is just one of 4 main events per year) has announced a prize fund of £26.7million. I'm sure payouts roll a hell of a long way down the field and more than pay air fares for players to get to London and back home. IM WC should reward pro qualifiers by paying out a hell of a lot further than 10th. It's the crowning event of the year!