After viewing Tom D’s post/pic on drafting at 70.3 WC’s; Who is exactly responsible for enforcing the no drafting rule? Is it the RD, USAT, someone else? Speaking of not enforcing rules; what about bringing everyone in your family across the finish line at the longer distance races? Is that against the rules? If these rules are unenforcable why have them???
Here’s a question for USAT and RD’s: How much money does it cost to enforce rules at 1/2 IM and a IM? Just currious as to the where the money goes for entry fees and annual license. If money is the problem, why don’t you double the price of the entry fee and annual license? These races fill up so fast that should not be a problem.
As far as the athletes breaking the rules these are the real losers!
I think some rules are enforced to the best of their ability and some rules (i.e. crossing the finish line with you r family) are not. This I believe was some of the problems that IMNA had with USAT. by definition, the family finish line crossers should be DQ’d and usat thought that they should. IMNA says hey these people just finished an IM let them enjoy it with their family for gods sake
Maybe they should take out the DQ for the family finish line crossers but someone needs to do something about the bike drafting. There’s not a real good solution for that.
controlling drafting is the job of the officials, it is their responsiobility to police the race. Designing a course that makes their job easier should be in the back of the RD’s mind.
As for the cost of putting on a race, contact Record10carbon, he’ll tell you it is going to cost him bear 6 figures to put it on, a race of this size would be more. Timing is 5 figures, bouys, cones, racks, tents, and the other infrastructure will cost at least 5 figures. All those cops are working OT which is picked up by the race (although many cities will rebate a small portion of this later) Permits for the venue, permits for the for both the Bike and run are probably well over 20k for a race that long.
For drafting marshalls you need to find motos (time which has a monetary cost) plus probably have to cover a full tank of gas for the motos, food and housing for the officials, I’d wager that if they are travelling you are covering that as well.