there’s…zero chance you are correct. Draft legal is truly only in place to get it into the olympics and honestly - it would be an AG nightmare on short circuits from both a logistics and safety issue. I would love proof that I am wrong about DL, but non draft has been and is the most raced format worldwide. AG and elite. You could possibly be right about elite tri having close to the same amount of races, but there’s zero chance with AG I would suspect.
It doesn’t look that way in GB.
" The 2024 Age Group calendar includes 27 qualifying events for the Age-Group European and World Championships that will take place in 2025. Races will take place at venues and events across Britain, allowing for a wide range of different racing opportunities including sea, river, lake, and reservoir swims as well as open and closed bike courses. ** Next year’s calendar includes seven draft legal events."
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Nope, in Spain I’ve done up to 17 races per year, all draft legal. I have even raced three times during a weekend to try win my team’s ranking. On any given weekend there is a draft legal race during race season, and sometimes the problem is choosing which one. There is virtually no short distance that is not draft legal. And the same goes for most of Europe.
I can assure you it’s not the case in Switzerland, nor Poland. I’m quite confident it’s also not the case in Germany.
You were one thing right: the comment about men performances not being good enough for the podium was dumb.
Sure even in Spain, the non-draft legal races are pretty much draft legal!
In Ireland, there’s only 1 sprint race that’s draft legal which only gets around 15-20 men and 10 -15 women (mostly junior/U23 pursuing the ITU pathway). More people are interested in winning their AG in a non-draft legal race. We did have a draft-legal series until 2018, but the federation went backwards and scrapped it.
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Feel free to apologize for the anti American sentiment with this 
PS…not American hahahaha