Your question: "What are we to learn if he did?"
We could learn that maybe, for some individuals who get or got the vaccine it could cause a fatal response when they are involved in high aerobic or anaerobic activity within _ days of receiving it .

Again, it was a simple response by the poster (great scott) that may or may not have an answer. I think most can agree that the timeline of the vaccine is a quick turnaround (likely due to the worldwide focus and all hands on deck approach) and we don't fully know the possible side effects.

Im not saying there are side effects or that it will cause a death. The poster didn't either. He brought up a question to consider the possible impact.

perhaps we could look at a number of things this man did before the race. perhaps he got the vaccine. perhaps he went to church. perhaps he had a PB&J for breakfast. how much of what he did before the race should we analyze, and i'm fine with analyzing any of it. however, it's unfair to say, "this person did [x] before he raced, and then he died, which means... what?" you can't cast aspersions on an activity or belief or behavior based on that. you can't say, "he got the vaccine, he raced, he died, i'm just throwing it out there!" that's just not fair. it's reckless.

if you had, say, 5 people die, or 8, then yes, because that's a huge anomaly. but 1 is not an anomaly. the onus is on you to explain how you establish a nexus between behavior and result. if you find it off-putting that you're asked to do this, then yes, i'm an off-putter.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Could not agree more, don’t you have a voice in this matter? ;)

maybe. we'll see.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Hey Ed, I just realized that perhaps this was your first race back in the sport after the really bad crash at Nice 70.3 World's then rehab and then a world on perpetual hold. Am I correct? If so, welcome back to racing! I assume you are also racing in Hawaii in a month?

The second post in this thread refers to a second cardiac event during the race. That is what got my attention and prompted my question. Would be interesting to know if those two people had anything in common in their recent health history.

Yes, my first race since Nice! Feels great to be racing again! And yeah, Honu is next!

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Cool, I saw that registration is open for Hawaii70.3, but I can't go race without being stuck in an endless 14 day quarantine and I can't do that, so I have to wait till we have racing in Canada. In the mean time, I hope Ironman puts back warmup swims even with Covid19 procedures!!!

Welcome back to racing. Gald Nice70.3WC crash did not break you and you''re back in the game. Did you get a spot for the 70.3 Worlds?

I don’t know where the swimmer who died started or if a warm up would have prevented it. Maybe it was the backstroker who clearly started in the wrong wave. I can say with certainty, I am disappointed in that some racers seeded themselves way faster in the sub 27 min wave or 27-30 min wave who clearly are not going to swim those times.

Maybe it was to try to get out of the riff raff and have a better chance at clearing so many you’d otherwise have to pass on the bike or avoid high afternoon winds—or hotter temperatures. Whatever the reason it was completely crap you had so many starting up front when they should have been considerably back.

In hindsight I honestly thought 30-33 wave would be the ballpark and realistic. A few ticks over 30 min with having to pass several hundreds on the swim alone. What does this have to do with the death? A lot.

If you’re an inexperienced swimmer posing up front you endanger not only yourself by getting swum over, but are risking other faster swimmers from you moving so slowly —they come up on you faster than they would normally expect & collide. Stressful and painful potentially. Additionally, without all those improperly self seeded athletes, I couldn’t tell you how much time was lost having to try getting around 5-10 shoulder to shoulder packs of swimmer impeding forward movement. But it was a lot —at least 30-40 seconds. Frustrating.

I suggest the faster swimmers should have to provide seeded proof from previous races (verifiable) in the first couple waves. They do that for some running race waves. This way it keeps the slower athletes and faster swimmers out of harm’s way. Plus, it stops those athletes trying to get a jump on conditions from flat out lying about their actual ability.

When I did NXTRI they hosed us down with cold seawater on the deck to get acclimated before we jumped in. Then there was 5-10minutes to warm up before we lined up between two kayaks and the ferry used the horn to start us off

Seriously? Surely folks that would carry on when they may be able to help are in a small minority?
If like me, you have no special skills in that regard and saw someone in difficulty but already being attended to by several people including race officials, I'd carry on. But otherwise I would, and have, stopped just in case.

Are you sure?
I fully agree with what I think you're suggesting. i.e. Knowing the medical history, especially with regards Covid-19 vaccine of 1 or 2 athletes who suffered incidents during a race is not useful.

In fact, in my opinion it would be downright reckless to provide this information, in the absence of substantial and rigorous analysis to support a link. Since that doesn't exist, information about individual incidents should not be in the public domain. Far too many people seem to think individual anecdotes have some value and can be judged by the reader. I believe this is linked to the online trend whereby people "do their own research". That phrase really means looking for material to support what one wants to believe, whether consciously or subconsciously. It's not the righteous taking on of personal responsibility that proponents often suggest. Confirmation bias is not a positive influence on public health, politics, or anything else. While the poster who said it would be interesting to know the vaccine history of these people, most likely means no harm and is sincere; they are suggesting what is actually a misguided and harmful approach, by any logical analysis.

I think you do try to see the world as it is, not just as you'd like it to be. That makes you "smarter" than most. We should all aim for that.

Yeah, I did.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Super. Hopefully you get the race you want after the rehab and race shutdowns!!!

I have/had no chance to do any events that I can try to qualify with (actually no chance of events period). By the time any events happen where I don't cross border and need quarantine on return it rolls over to NZ.

This happens even in the slower groups. I've only done one tri (70.3) and it was swim self-seeded. Knowing I was a slower swimmer and my expected pace, I slotted in the 40-45min group. Not ever doing a race before, I was shocked when I hit the first pack of 5-10 shoulder-to-shoulder. When I hit the second, I wasn't quite as surprised, but I was frustrated. I finished in a little over 41 min (2nd in my 60-64 age group) and thought "Next time I'm going to seed in the next fastest group." Your post teaches me that it's not just the "slow" folks who try to seed in a faster group than they can swim and that I should seed appropriately and look out for the packs of poorly seeded swimmers. I have no thoughts on a solution.

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Not a coach. Not a FOP Tri/swimmer/biker/runner. Barely a MOP AGer.
But I'm learning and making progress.

I think this happens in every Triathlon/running race where people Are asked to self seed. People will either over estimate their ability, or go further forward than they should, because they know others will be doing the same.

Having to prove previous swim times to get in the first few waves seems like a good idea in practice, but would be very difficult to enforce. In running races your bib number will say what wave you are meant to be in. You could try and give faster swimmers lower bib numbers, but it would create a lot of extra hassle.

There were at least 100 people in the under 27 group and I think about 20 actually swam under 27. One young woman, very very large and in a diving wetsuit, started near the front of the sub 27 group. She initially lined up near me in the 27-30 group then decided to move up. She was essentially dog-paddling when I passed her near the beginning of the race on her way to a what must have been a 90 minute swim. I think it was probably a dangerous decision for her to even start this race, and even more so to start in the front.

IM could assign start corrals just like big running races, based on previous results. If you have no previous results, you are assigned a corral near the back.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Swim cap color easily could solve this.

Sad that we lost another athlete and empathies for his family :(

Here is an article I recalled shedding a bit of light on what can be done to avoid troubles.

I have coached more than 500 IM athletes, and we would always recommend a sturdy health check and potentially EKG, at least for first-timers. Ironman France used to have a COMPULSORY health check upon registering at the race venue, or else no racing.

I raced full IM St George in 2011 and I recall it was a water start and plenty of places to warm up. Did they change that?
Water in the reservoir was indeed sub60 but very calm and easy to navigate.

T

Generally speaking, my sympathies to the individual and their family. This was my first event I participated in where someone didn't return to their family, and I'm very saddened by it. I don't know if poor seeding was the cause or could be pinpointed, but it certainly seems to make sense.

I was in the same situation as you - knowing how little I've swam in the past year, but being a swimmer, I self-seeded pretty much in the middle of 30-33. I was pretty sure I could swim 30 min no problem, but I don't like being swam over (I didn't enjoy water polo) so I thought that would be safe. I came in at 30:07 and passed what felt like hundreds of people. I'm fairly sure I would have had another 60-90 seconds faster swim without the weaving I had to do. I know I got cut off by several people and ended up swimming over their legs, I almost got elbowed in the face several times because I came up on people so fast, and I had to make WIDE passes around groups of frantic kicking. Frustrating and I can only imagine that if there's any risk of a medical event, the stress and suddenness of people swimming around you seems like it would play a role. I don't know how you control it - I like the idea of color coded caps pre-race. They managed to figure out how to avoid body marking, so color coding shouldn't be that bad.

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KJ
Swim and Triathlon Coach
AllTerrainEndurance.com
KJ@allterrainendurance.com

I don’t know what color coded caps do for anyone aside from change the color, it still doesn’t solve people from overestimating or flat out lying about swim ability . Either by their own choice or being told by a coach so they can get on the bike with less traffic (even by a few minutes) avoid heat and being with calmer winds as the minutes pass, or not have to navigate the swim with so many around you ( clearer waters). Anyone who does that to tilt things disingenuously in their favor is just not cool.

I still think the faster waves need to have verifiable accounts of ability .
Even one wave is too much —that can add up to literally hundreds of people who shouldn’t be in that wave. THEN color code caps knowing pre-race results on swim prowess is legit, and thus, safer and more fair to those in those waves.

They have the data available to create a ranking system based on past results. Maybe they should use it and for those without past results, they can go to the back of the line or swim a 500/1000 free in a masters swim meet if they want a place near the front of the line. They also have the data based upon start times and total swim times to know exactly who the offenders are. They could send them a warning letter or inform them that if they start in the wrong wave again it will be a DQ. As a person with a swim background I take offense to what these people are doing.

Maybe just add the delta from your seed time to actual time as penalty

Let's say you enter in the sub 27 min wave and you swim 35, that is 8 min. That 8 minutes gets converted to 43 minutes in the results for bullshitting your expected time. Maybe divide by 2 for a 4 min penalty in case you got your goggles knocked off or had a cramp, but you get the picture

Problem should resolve itself quickly

Haha... I don't think you need to go that far. There's a lot of legit reasons why someone won't swim as fast as they might reasonably expect to. No need to make their day even worse. If there are swim caps associated with start corrals based on past results, I think the vast majority of people would get in the correct corral, largely solving the problem.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Did that race once. I guess you swim to island and then line up for 30 minutes maybe if you are in one of later waves.

I guess one could also do a swim to Australian exit and walk over timing matt and start race if cable in water doesn't work.

I'd better shut up or someone will put me to work.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot