All the talk of race categories has gotten me to thinking, which usually gets me in trouble, but I’ll give it a try.
I used to do snow ski racing and a loved it becuase sometimes I could win my flight (as they called it). The reason I could is they split people up by ability based on a handicap into groups of people rather than by age and gender.
You received your handicap based from a qualifying race or your first race where you would compete in a seperate division for the people that did not have a handicap yet. Once you got your handicap you moved to the flight with people that had similar handicaps. After that your handicap was then based on an average of your last two races, so it would change over time as you improved and you would move up a flight.
It really would not be that hard to do the same for triathlon. It would allow people to compete based on ability rather than gender, age, weight, etc. which is really in many cases a poor indication of ability.
It would also allow someone like me with no background in the sports and a full time job, other obligations, etc. a chance to win some hardware.
What are everyone else’s thoughts?
Jim