In part it is purely based on a percentage of the gross number of athletes that compete/register for 140.6. One of the reasons for there being two full days of racing for 70.3 World Championships is that the number of female athletes racing in 70.3s is likely significantly higher than for 140.6. In addition to that, to help drive growth Ironman has granted additional slots through it's Women For Tri initiative to drive participation. Honestly this is a supply vs. demand question. All things being equal, Ironman is a for-profit organization and would re-examine its slotting for Kona if it made them more money.

This is just me spitballing, I have no idea.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I think one considerable aspect is that the only IM World Championship is happening within the pro field, not the AGs. For AGs, I think it is okay to have a roughly proportionate % of gender representation (but leaning on the side of more females to continue to encourage increased participation especially in geographies where the sport is unfortunately male-dominated).

I am in full agreement that the men and women pro fields should be the same size (which the are not).

First we need to define fair.

The current system is set up so that everyone has as close as possible to the same odds for qualification. That sounds pretty fair to me.

Additionally, Ironman is a business. And their largest customer base is men. I doubt it would be good for their bottom line if they made it twice as hard for males to qualify for Kona than women.

But I also understand the chicken/egg argument here and concede that there's no easy answer.

I agree with this as well.

Completely agree with Sean. Someone is going to get the short end of the stick regardless of the qualifying system and complain. I mean, right now with 26 slots, a 65+ year old plus competitor only has to be better than 50 people and 75+ only better than probably 25 people where someone in the 30-45 age groups on the male side is battling 125+ people. The odds aren't quite "fair" there, but those are the cards for this year.

I do think there is a growing number of women competing in all sorts of endurance sports. I remember doing this half marathon maybe 9 years ago and women were the majority by a lot. It was in New Hampshire, US and nothing special to make it more attractable to women. I do realize the WTC is driven by profit. And I don't want to take anything away from the men. But if there are going to be 4 slots in one male AG, then give 4 to the women in that AG. Take away some of the fluff spots if need be. I don't know if that could work and I'm just throwing out ideas. But maybe more women would sign up for IMs if there were equal slots. Maybe, maybe not.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I appreciate Women for Tri so much! They were giving out extra slots to the 70.3 world champs. I benefitted once by them and so grateful! I wish they did the same for the full Ironman Kona WCs.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

We've talked about women's participation in tri here a bunch. Overall, it's the cycling that seems to keep women's participation down. There's more women that enter running races than men. Masters swimming was pretty evenly split IME. But cycling, there's just as wide of a participation gap as there is in triathlon. I don't know the answer on how to change that.

i do agree the female pros should have the same number of kona slots

in the amatuer race i think there is a few things that should happen
i guess the easiest change should be, that some of the lesser frequented age groups should not have a qualification slot at every race . like it happens now with female and pro race there should be one race that has kona slots for females in the age groups over 60 and then another race that has them for males . that would free up a few slots for competitive female age groups.

another chance , i see is floating qualification slots which are not gender fixed but performance fixed . its not so hard to calculate a fair handycap for a female should have over a male athlete in a certain race.lets assume we have 2 or whatever floating spots not based on gender but performance, we give a handicap of approx 11 percent so the highest non female non qualifier goes against the highest male qualifier and the faster wins. the loser of this match goes against the next highest qualifier of the other gender .

before you say this is not fair on race dynamics etc etc let me point out that its already not fair as some people get more drafting advantage then others . and rolling start already means there is no real race for a slot anymore.

I mean, the kind of funny thing is that by only having 26 slots per race, meaning basically 1 for each age group male and female, it actually does by default make it equal slots for men and women. Or at least pretty darn close to it.

As mentioned, there is no way to make it "fair" for everyone. If you make it equal for men and women, do you also have to make it equal for older age groups that are competing against only 2 or 3 other people? Or nobody? I'm saying this as a female who has been trying to qualify for several years and more than once come in third in my age group that offered 2 slots and NOT qualified. Does it suck? Yes. But I'll be honest and say that I'm not necessarily sure it would have felt more "fair" for me to have gotten a slot rather than a male who took third in an age group that was twice the size of mine. I do think it kind of sucks that there are usually first place place AGers who are WAY ahead of everyone else and qualify every single year and this leaves it so that it feels like it will just be the same exact people qualifying year after year if it's only for AG winners. It's going to become nearly impossible for anyone to qualify who doesn't basically dedicate a year of their life to training and qualifying, and of course lucks out that that one person faster than them doesn't show up to the same race.

But also as mentioned above, for pros I do believe there absolutely should be equal slots for men and women, no question. If they feel like 50 women is too many then maybe take away 10 men and make the slots 40/40.

Define "equal"?

Equal based on total numbers will not be equal because more men race then women. As a percentage it is equal.

Agree with everything you said and I do get it. Being third in my last IM in 2019, second place already had a slot and I thought for sure I'd finally get my slot by roll down. There were always 2 slots in the AG I was in at that time in that event. But maybe a few less women showed up or finished. So the second slot was given to the men. I was crushed. Even the predictions were saying there would be 2 slots (from those physhe (sp?) sheets). But I understand why my slot was given away. Whether there are 40 of us or 140 of us I've always found that the pointy end of fast women is usually similar.

Right now the slots are decided after the organizers know the number of participants/finishers per AG. What if a standard amount of slots were set in stone for all IMs where women received at least got 2-3 slots for the larger AGs. Would more women show up and participate?

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

I haven't analyzed the older men's fields like I do with the older women (I'm now AG 50-54). Even though the men's 50-54 AG might be bigger or even doubled in size, is the number of competitive athletes going for Kona also twice the size of the competitive athletes in the women's corresponding field? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't believe the competitive males will be double the size of competitive females even if the overall participants show the male AG doubling in size compared to the female AG. I think realistically the number of athletes who are willing to do the incredible amount of training and devote a year of their life is going to be similar between the corresponding male and female AGs.

One interesting thing I'll mention since I watch US and European IM results for women like a hawk. The women in Europe have much smaller fields but there is a higher percentage of "fast" women in their fields. Not taking anything away from US athletes. It's just my own observation. The Euro female AGs may sometimes be small but more of them show up and perform at a very high level. It's too bad they almost always only get one slot per female AG.

ETA: I raced against the Euros when I did IM Copenhagen. I was 5th with a 3:36 marathon at age 48 (sub 11 time overall). The women who beat me were simply amazing! Only 1 slot and zero roll downs.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

This is true for both men and women. 70.3 attracts 1.5-2.5x the number of entrants than 140.6 do and that multiple is growing. It was 1.7x in 2015 and 2.5x in 2019. The ratio of men vs women is roughly similar at 75% men in the 70.3s and 80% men in the 140.6s. The ratio is consistent from 2015 through 2019 per the data at Obstri.com.

First of all, congratulations with your 3:36 on the run.

And to the quoted part above, I had to think a bit about that (being male). But you could be right: there could be a greater chunk of "only once finishers" with the men. That are those who make a bet in the bar after a couple of beers and sign up for an ironman.

I had a similar experience when I raced Frankfurt in 2009....smaller women's field, but super fast. I prd that day, came close to a spot, but would have needed basically a pro time to get a slot...crazy! Keep at it:). Still, I was super happy to have raced so well, and I think a part of that was the faster field.

One way to possibly help with the numbers is having a separate division for athletes attempting to KQ. In the large male groups you may only have 10-20 actually shooting for a KQ and the rest are bucket-listers. On the women's side you could have similar number of women shooting for a KQ slot but the overall women participants might be lower for that AG. Or maybe go by a certain time cutoff from the faster finisher in that AG. So you count how many athletes finished within (random #) 2hrs of first place in that AG and base your KQ allocations on that. That would at least give some idea of the competition within the AG.

20% of full IMs are women? Wow, I didn't realize it was that low.

It would be interesting if there was some way we could figure out the percentage of athletes going for a Kona spot. And of those who are trying to qualify, what is the percentage of men and women? I bet the ratio is a bit less lopsided. As I said in an above comment, I am willing to bet the number of those athletes who are willing to train at high levels and sacrifice a year of their life will not be 80/20 male/female. I might be wrong. And there is no true way to figure this out. Unless there was some sort of survey. But that has flaws too.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

You were 3rd in your last Ironman. The gap to 2nd was 53 minutes and the gap to 1st was 59. In the same age group on the men's field you have to look all the way to the 15th place to find the same gap to first place as yours. Would that be fair that you got the slot and the 15th place male didnt?

It is fair now. Every age group male or female gets 1 slot.

Perhaps but how would you control for that? Many a good AGer thought they were 1 and done.

Just curious, who are you? You seem to know my name and even looked me up. Which is fine. I do the same sometimes. Obs Tri is my good friend :-)

I don't know much about the 2nd place woman but the first place woman had done some racing as a pro years ago. So of course she was an hour faster. I was really proud of my 3rd place finish. I had terrible stomach issues starting 3 hours into the bike and had the most painful, awful run ever. I crossed the finish line and minutes later was projectile vomiting all over the place. I was never saying it wasn't fair. But I think it's OK that I was crushed and disappointed my AG only got one slot that year.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

  

You could make the argument that not only should it be equal between men and women, it should be equal age group to age group.
But then you'll argue it's much harder in an AG with 200 people than in an AG with 3
So then you bring in the allocation of slots per number of participants
And we are back at square 1 which is the WTC model of slots by participants, with a floor or 1.

Anyone who wants to qualify for Kona has to swim without a wetsuit. That will cut the numbers down!

It's a numbers game. IM race fields are generally about 2/3 men.

As someone mentioned, 26 slots effectively makes it equal as each age group gets exactly one slot. Anything beyond that and the prorated allocation has to favor the men. If we want any kind of mathematical fairness.

Let's say a race has 2100 finishers (1400 male, 700 female) and 100 slots. Why give 50 slots to both sexes when one sex is twice the size of the other?

From a pure statistical perspective the female field is over represented with slots because they start off with the same base number of slots (13 just like the men). Prorated slot calcs also favor the women because unfilled slots (no finisher in the AG) stay within the same sex to be reallocated.

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