Yeah that is actually a good point. I hadn't though of that. In that regard it would definitely be useful.

Road cycling does not distinguish by age, just cats, then they have a masters 50+ and maybe a masters 40+

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There's almost no incentive to race pro in triathlon, so there's always going to be sandbaggers.

The fact that its so much easier to get to Kona (or 70.3 worlds) as ager than as a pro just exacerbates that effect.

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In many countries you do not have swimming and running pros. The pro status is mostly a US title due to NCAA.
In many sports you are elite if you are fast and you start in the first wave. Your result will also be in your age group.

Good example on this list 40-44 from Birkerbeinrerrennet
http://www.langrenn.com/....5721332-117466.html

Again, that's why I said it is clear as mud & difficult, if not impossible, to define someone as a pro vs amateur.

For most of us in NorCal in M50-54, if someone like Tim Sheeper shows up, you're racing for 2nd. :-) Though there was the ONE sprint duathlon that ONE time...

But just because he was once a pro doesn't mean he shouldn't be able to race AG now. Until triathlon gets the equivalent of a "seniors" or "legends" tour...

Ian

So we have a women's category so the girls don't feel bad about losing to men?

I understand the feeling, I have felt it myself when I see names I used to read about in triathlon magazines ahead of me (usually far ahead!) in my AG standings. The thought passes in my mind that a 'Master Pro' category would be a nice way to recognize some of the people who helped grow the sport as well as pump my ego up just a bit more.

Then I remember that most races already have about 12 or 16 'winners' and we don't need to make awards ceremonies any longer...
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" I take my gear out of my car and put my bike together. Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafes. Non-racers. The emptiness of of their lives shocks me. "
(opening lines from Tim Krabbe's The Rider , 1978

Either way, I would rather race a bunch of people of my experience/talent vs a random mix of people that the only common thing between us that we were born within a few years of each other. If you look at the mountain bike nations, cat 3 riders from the 20-24 and 45-49 all finished within minutes of each other. In the interest of competition, categories give a much more equal playing field.

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Bingo.... and done.

I think a graded field would be cool too, seems to work for most other sports.

Screw Nats, they show up every weekend at my local crit. HTFU and deal with it.

Unless of course you are a celebrity.

In IM CDA, I had Dr. Tom Evans who raced in my AG one year...he won the OA as a pro a year or two before. Think that didn't s*ck knowing he was capable of doing 8-whatever he wanted? Had I blown up worse than what I did, I wouldn't have KQ'd that year (barely made it as it was), but would have been much easier had he not raced--but had Cam Brown or Reid raced, I wouldn't have made that goal. That said, he raced faster & easily won the AG. If he meets the standards for AG racing, by all means, race AG.

If Tim DeBoom, Peter Reid, Crowie, Cam Brown and who knows how many others stopped racing pro (as well as any other number of 2nd & 3rd tier pros) and raced AG, I'd have to take my medicine like a big boy & be pushed way further down the results list than I am now. They have had a different unique opportunity to get where they are I may or may not have had, but it is what it is. We make our own choices in life & go with it. I did not call a "Whaaambulance" or dial "Whine-1-1" if these guys showed up in my AG racing. I just put my head down & hammer the best I can. At the end of the day, the chips fall where they fall & that is my result. Former pro racing AG or not. If we concern ourselves with what other's have done in life on the start line, we are missing out on the most important part of racing...the fun and participation in giving the best we can milk out of ourselves at that moment. I used to have a different opinion about x-pros racing AG, but re-thought my position & why can't they?

Crowie can't race as fast when he is 50 as when he was 35, so is he supposed to keep racing pro with the young guys & not make any $$?? What is the point of racing pro then aside from just saying you're racing pro...which in itself just doesn't seem that impressive to me anyhow. It's like saying, "I'm an amateur." It's just a classification as to if you're trying to earn a paycheck or not at sport. Soap box over.

Based on the amount of money and opportunity for money available in the sport, most pros are pretty much really fast amateurs anyway. They have their reasons for paying money to get their pro card, not that I'll understand most of them. I'd love for the "Pro" system to be done away with and let whoever takes the money spot to get the money. I have a hard time mentally justifying the idea that an amateur beat a card carrier but can't collect any money for the effort.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

I'd kick his ass or be happy to have lost to him. One of the two.

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OK, well I am going to correct a few misconceptions here first, and take a stab at why hypothetically some athletes might be required to race 'pro' in Ironman specifically.

Firstly, Cameron's presence made absolutely no difference to me, the only reason I highlighted him was because it was noticeable he outsplit the entire pro field on the bike by a margin.

Secondly, I am advocating no stance or solutions here per se, although I would not argue for current or former pro athletes of any sport being deprived the opportunity to compete in triathlon. The question for me is whether the pro field is a more appropriate home for certain athletes given their histories, rather than the amateur field. For what it is worth, I think the current AG/pro classifications are perfectly functional.

Thirdly, this is not just about being fast and drawing a line at a certain level of speed. The point is as a professional athlete, your full-time job is conditioning for competitive sport. Whether that is cycling, running, swimming or anything else, your exclusive focus is making yourself a better machine. That is a background and opportunity a true amateur simply doesn't have. I have nothing but respect for the fastest amateurs and I agree there should be no compulsion for guys like e.g. Sami Inkinen or Sam Gyde to have to race pro just because they are awesome.

This question is not one of toughness, but one of fairness. This is not a manliness competition. The guys in my opinion that stand to lose out here are some marginal Kona qualifiers, yes, but more importantly those that stand a chance of podiuming at the WC events (Kona and 70.3), and I am certainly not a podium contender. So please do not think the reason I am posting this is out of self-interest, bitterness or softness. It is not.

The reason Ironman is different from your average NorCal triathlon is that IM has Kona slots as the 'prize money', not simply bragging rights. Pros have every opportunity to get to Kona in the pro ranks. The question is simply whether Kona slots and podium places should be available to those who, by most sensible criteria, would be defined as professional athletes (i.e. having a full time big-money contract with a World Tour team, in this specific example).

Plenty of pro triathletes are not pro triathletes because of the big money available in races. We all know that is rubbish. There are many other reasons to race in the pro field, e.g. opportunity to race on clearer roads, less frantic swim starts, better sponsorship opportunities, marketing for coaching businesses etc. The list of pros that fit this profile is practically endless.

I don't profess to know the right answer, but simply because this is a grey area does not mean a line should not be drawn somewhere. Toughening up is not an answer to unfairness. I'd hate to be the lady who is deprived of her dream slot at Kona simply because Marianne Vos decides one day to give IM a fling. She could practically breatstroke the swim, walk the run and still qualify. That, to me, just doesn't feel right.

You forgot the VO2max classifications

Which is, as usual, twice as obvious in the women's ranks. F35-45 is littered with ex-pros, could've-been-pros, and others who finish top-10 at regional championships (IM Frankfurt, for example) and maintain a website full of sponsors, race results and images from their winter camps in Mallorca. They're pro in everything but the official status.

But it's the same way in every sport. Cycling has categories, but there's a guy who's racing in my category who trains as many hours as he likes (which is more than 20 a week), is now on a two-week altitude camp in the Alps, fully sponsored head to toe and even if he weren't, he has enough money to buy top-end equipment - and he's as powerful as some local Elite category riders, but because he doesn't race often he doesn't want to upgrade. Meanwhile, I'm a university student with a three-digit account balance, an alu frame and have to think twice about whether I can afford two gels on this ride. Tough, but nothing to be done about it.

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Big talk. I am sure that's exactly how you'd feel if you'd missed out on a slot or a podium place to a guy who has made his living out of being the best in the business of pro triathlon. :)

the point I made - Tim Van Houtem finished 4th at Nice, I'm guessing that in spite of finishing 20 minutes behind the winner that didn't require half the training time, he won his AG worlds at 70.3 2 years ago and I think he's had comparable results elsewhere - he's M30-34 and as far as I know not lost his AG in the last 2 years

he's obviously giving up cash to race as an AG'er and it seems that he'd be fine racing either pro or AG'er but from a purely training perspective, he has to be training like a pro, he has to be doing the volume and getting the appropriate rest and recovery required to race at that level which I suspect is difficult if you're holding down a 40+ hour a week job

I'm not sure that really it matters that much, pro or AG'er in almost every sport at the pointy end of the fields there is little that differentiates the two, its a matter of degree's and so you remove "ex-pro's" all that happens is there is still some fast sub-set of those remaining who still clean up whenever they race

This is indeed a fascinating topic which deserves to be discussed regularly as the sport progresses. It touches on issues of fairness which I think we mostly all agree with. A race involves covering a certain distance for all participants and the first male and female over the lines are the winners. We now have two kinds of participants, those who race as professionals and those who race as amateurs. We've even divided the amateur category into many age related sub categories to ensure 'fairness'. However even these constructs can seem crude and ineffectual at times. Seeing ex-pros grab age group slots for Hawaii might seem to go against the spirit of age-group slots for 'average' folk but I tend to agree that we cannot blame, and thus castigate, pros for being genetically gifted and having had the chance to race at a high level in a *previous* life.

However I believe the 'fairness' issue has all to do with what one does in the *current* life. There is a huge difference between an ex-pro who now does a '9 to 5' desk job, versus one who spends their time running early season training camps in Lanzarote and then qualifies at IM Lanza. Why? Because we're in a training heavy sport. The more time you can train as an amateur the better your chances are at qualifying for Hawaii. It's obviously not quite as simple as that but it does have an undeniable impact. In other aspects of life this discrepancy wouldn't necessarily be rewarded. If I had two job applicants on my desk for a junior position fresh out of uni, one had completed his or her degree in the normal time with good grades, yet the other had taken twice as long (possibly even with slightly better grades) but had no extenuating circumstances (i.e. they just took their time), I would choose the former. It is rare that we incentivise effort for efforts sake, yet long distance triathlon training is quite biased towards this so there is a shift from our normal appraisal reward system and I think some of these 'fairness' issues are because they don't fit within this sphere.

SteveMc

It seems a bit silly to me when people have disdain for very fast individuals racing in the AG ranks. Just because someone has altered their lifestyle to have an advantage doesn't mean that they are suddenly a different athlete. If one is mad that they are beaten by someone who lives and breathes triathlon, then perhaps a life few sacrifices are in order to prevent this from happening next time. Or, they simply got beaten and accept the loss, and such is sport.

Dedication to the sport falls along a broad continuum, so there is no clear line where someone should be considered pro. Additionally, prize money is offered at lots of races that aren't very hard to win, so earning money is also not a valid distinction either. I don't think that anyone should be expected to race pro; that is a personal decision and if they decide not to then so be it.

IM Kona is a world championship, so a very high level of competition should be readily accepted. People are getting faster every day as the sport expands, and it is becoming more and more difficult to place well in seemingly all races. So, we have a choice of either holding contempt for those freakishly fast people in our age group, or swallowing our pride and getting to work on being faster.