As the 70.3 World Champion, Iden gets a Kona slot.

From what I understand, they got rid of the validation requirement because of current circumstances.


Norwegian Duo takes aim at Kona · MX Endurance

They changed the rules.

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blog

He said in his Breakfast with Bob interview that they changed the rule and he does not need to validate, and plans to race Kona after Tokyo.

Iden said in relation to Kona, "It's possible I may not be able to win."

He could win.

Let's see what the numbers show...I have a feeling this Challenge format on a closed course (for better viewing) and with all of the best athletes/big names from all distances will out draw super league. Personally I was totally mesmerized from start to finish today.

This just reminded me...

Watching the race today, they showed "Wild Card" racers, like the young guy from Norway who was drilling the bike and made the race exciting.

Ironman gives wildcards to sob stories, CEO's and celebrities. Yaaaawn.
It's time they reserved 2-3 spots for professionals.
For example in an Olympic year inviting the podium.
Or a top contender who missed out on qualifying for unusual circumstances.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think the pros are a means to an end for Challenge. Same with aligning with the PTO, it's just a means. They care about what drives their business and that is the amateur.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

“ Who said that, Iden? He still has to validate, so that’s kind of silly. Unless they changed the rules.”

Yes, they changed the rules. Iden mentioned it in his Breakfast with Bob interview. No validation required in 2021.

Yeh I think it went as expected, some SC guys blew up, some held on to decent positions. I think 4 in the top 11 is about right. It's scary that on a heavily biased LC bike course someone like Henri Schoeman, at 57kg can come 7th in his first LC race.

If I'm a LC guy with a poor swim you have to hope to god that there are more races like this and the 20m draft rules becomes the norm at 70.3. Because if not it's big problem.

This race being in such an unusual setting is what adds to it being special - on top of $$$, “Championship”, amazing field, and the fact that everyone was so hungry to race and watch this year. I thought it was effin amazing, watched the men’s race from mid bike to the end and will watch women’s replay this week on the trainer. I did wish they had someone with triathlon expertise on the broadcast to complement B Granger, but it was awesome to watch and listen nevertheless.

Having said that, unless you’re a LC tri dork like me, I bet SL is indeed more exciting because things change a lot more and you get different scenery and just crazy stuff like people jumping into the water with their running shoes on to avoid elimination + Aussie announcers to keep you engaged.

side note, why is this such a common thing on ST - there seems to be a belief that TT skills are super hard. i mean . . . i got my first pair of aerobars when i was 12. luis rides really fast, in packs, on technically demanding courses . . . all the time.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Schoeman also had a puncture in the last 2 laps and like I said previously, has been recovering from Covid. If you watched the Valencia WC last month he was clearly still struggling. Quite excited to see what he can do at 70.3 worlds on a course that will suit him more.

Yeh this does always surprise me. We've seen ITU guys jump in with minimal TT hours and get results many times.

I do think though that to run to their potential, which yesterday most did not, you need time in the TT position. And also the right sweetspot type sessions not to blow up at 60km. But with the right experience and prep you'll see more guys running like Iden after a solid bike.

Lionel said he had a bad swim in the interview after the race.

Check the interview after he finishes

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so in terms of the post-race, a few stray thoughts:

-in a lot of ways i like the idea of an 'arena' race. i've done them before and they make for great TV and can be fast. and definitely given COVID, it was the safest - maybe the only - way to get a race underway.

-but: how do we make the bike . . . better? it was a bit boring to watch and must've been painfully boring to race. hills? chicanes? water hazards? i dunno.

-the wildcard idea is brilliant, and a few of the wildcard entries clearly enriched the racing yesterday. it makes kona's pro draw look rigid and shabby by comparison. find fast or interesting athletes and get them in there!

-drafting . . . it's definitely a four-letter-word on slowtwitch and for a lot of the US market, i guess. but eventually, you've got a few dozen athletes who are able to swim within a minute or two of one another and ride the same. 20m between each just gets unworkable and makes for those awkward situations we had with frustrating passes and quasi-blocking, and then frustrating with the inadequacy of a 2-minute penalty for what felt like pretty egregious cases.

-what do we do about lapped athletes? in a long-course race, anything can happen and i'm a bit reluctant to say lapped athletes should be pulled, simply because there's always a chance of clawing back. (especially when the money goes 20 deep!). but the michi weiss situation was silly - he was clearly interfering with the race dynamic at the front and i'd wished that there was some way to control that. maybe lapped athletes have to ride outside lines?

-coverage: as far as I'm concerned, anything that pushes all races to up their game is great. i have a few quibbles: there were some weirdly static stretches where the camera stayed on, say, sam long for 5 minutes while all kinds of other stuff was happening in the field. k-mac came across a bit poorly pressing lisa norden for her plans when she started limping. the commentators were a motley crew of backgrounds and abilities and it would be nice to have a crew with good chemistry and knowledge. the helmet cams and moto ride-bys were brilliant. the real-time leaderboards were brilliant. the real-time pacing information was absolutely fantastic and i hope it becomes a norm. for casual athletes (or even for dedicated runners, riders, or swimmers who don't know tri) getting pace/speed info in real time allows you to really understand what you're watching.

-finally: if i were a 20-something triathlete, again, and i'd just won 6-figures in a race and found myself with time to kill in florida, i'd be partying like ric james. i feel badly for these athletes who are under covid restrictions on what should be the best post-race party of the year.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

The race would have been very exciting, as a draft legal race. It’s such a shame that some draft whiners had to mess up our sport 40 years ago. Maybe it’s time to turn that around.

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Athlinks / Strava

I don't agree. I thought the non drafting aspect made it highly technical, like a game of chess, I enjoyed it.

One suggestion though-its very hard to tell who is who in the swim.

How about personalised swim caps, different bold colours for top 5, strip's, dots, fluro.. Should be enough distinct combos to help differentiate..?

I'm guessing surely this has been tried before but for some reason unsuccessful?

superleague does this, and i think it's great. not like it's difficult - caps are a dime a dozen! back in the day, jurgen zack always used to just wear a black cap no matter what the 'required' cap was, and it was kind of cool. easy to spot him!

w/r/t drafting, i'm not sure going fully draft legal is the answer either. on the daytona course, it would have pretty predictable results. i just wonder if there's a more creative solution here. someone a while back suggested having separate lanes so that riders could at least go side-by-side, say 4 or 5 abreast. that would be pretty cool.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Side by side would be a great compromise!

As a old guy, who used to love the local draft legal triathlons back in the 80’s, before it was even an issue... I’ve come around to the modern draft rules, in regards to chip timed, rolling and wave starts, with huge fields, on TT bikes and inexperienced riders. But in events like yesterday, with a mass start, unlimited room, and perfect surfaces... it seemed rather silly to have an all out full contact, draft legal, free for all swim, and then clamp down, and restrict the riders to riding between cones. I was like man... let em rip, look at all that room, let’s go 5 wide and have a race! And how nice it would be to not need subjective judges, and officials, and rulings and warnings, and penalties. It’s a freaking race, it’s not figure skating or hockey.

The side by side idea was mine a few pages ago... maybe a perfect compromise? It would be easy enough to lay down some lane lines, with all that room. That would also make things more interesting and exciting.

It’s also one thing to watch, as a triathlete. But it’s another, to try and come up with ways to make it more interesting for football/basketball/ baseball people to maybe find it interesting. Or how about NASCAR folks? Or possibly suck in a TDF loving cyclist? From an outsider view, Kona is entertaining for it’s distances, and grueling conditions, scenery, and people cracking and crawling, and human interest stories. Julie Moss made it a thing. But A triathlon on a race track, made me realize it’s more like watching a track meet, or NASCAR race. If they want to make it noticed, outside of just other triathletes, they should focus on how to hype up the hard core race action.

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Athlinks / Strava

i have to say one has to agree in a way to have it a 1 k swim 4o k bike 9 k run 1 k swim 40 k bike and 9 k run would make it even more spectacular i do not think tri will become a tv sport otherwise. there needs to be more changes for the more general audience.
superleague in a way does almost everything better than anybody else in the sport .
in a way you almost think pto and superleague should work toghether and the synergies would help both. pto
superleague drafting and pto superleague non drafting

definitely has been done and should be done

But it wouldn't be though... look at ITU - all you'd have had in this race is a 90 minute snooze fest of one big bike pack rolling around waiting to race on the run. A bit like Zwift....!

We can debate whether the draft rules could be tweaked one way or the other, but at least at gave the athletes something to have to think around during the bike.



Side by side is great in theory until a crosswind comes along. Then it may as well be draft legal.

There's is no perfect answer to this so people need to stop looking for one and accept either an effectively neutralised bike, or we live with some sort of drafting regulations. Well, of course the actual answer is to make it a TT/rolling start but then that has its downsides for entertainment too.

Why does it always have to be the big bad WTC vs everyone else..... I've done a few challenge events and a bunch of WTC events. Nothing wrong with either, and I felt like I was part of a much bigger production at the WTC events, very happy with what I got for my money. Apparently many people feel the same given the numbers. If Challenge continues to grow, that's great too. The more races the better.