Most of my race schedule consists of small local races in the sprint to international distance range. In many cases the total number of entrants in these events runs in the tens as opposed to the hundreds. I enjoy the convenience and atmosphere of small races as there is much less drafting and the overall stress levels tend to be reduced. Because I am an older racer (61 year old male) I often compete in a pretty small age group.
But I’ve found that some small races still have 10-year age divisions, or more likely, lump the older racers onto a 60+ group. Recently I asked a director why not continue the 5-year divisions above 60 years old. His answer: “There just aren’t enough entries to be competitive”. He was right about the limited entries; there were maybe a half dozen men older than 59, ranging from age 60 to early 70s. That got me thinking that even though there weren’t very many of us old geezers toeing the starting line, it wasn’t really fair to the 70-year old to be in the same age group as someone in his 60s.
This raised the even broader question of how quickly athletic performance in triathlon declines with age. So I have constructed a graph of the average time of the top three finishers in each age group at the 2006 ITU “international distance” world championship. I used this race because it represented a distance similar to the majority of local triathlons, and I was sure each division would contain some of the world’s elite age groupers - so it would be a good benchmark of athletic performance.
Here’s what I found…
There was a remarkable similarity in the top times of males in age groups 20-39. Based on their performances, they could easily have competed in a single category. Males age 40-44 were no slouches, either; the average time of the podium finishers was only about a minute and a half slower than males 20-24. Likewise, females age 20-39 were all bunched close together, and the times did not begin to tail off until they passed age 40.
But sure enough, as those of us on the dark side of 60 know, finishing times lengthen pretty quickly as you pass 60 and even a few years can apparently make a substantial difference in athletic performance. So, to race directors of small local races, don’t be afraid to keep those 5-year age groups going even though you probably won’t fill the podium. It’ll level the playing field for those veterans who have gone the distance.
Would you like to pay the extra cost for awards for each age group because thats effectivly the reason for lengthing age groups. It gets expensive if you have to give every person in the 50 and above category an award.
I just directed a race with 106. 3 people were over sixty years old. I knew this before hand and had a 50 and over catagory as there were not enough entrants to justify buying the age group awards for the 60 and over.
Im with you and completely understand the reasoning behind it. Everyone whats a medal for finishing in a race that costs 40 bucks. Im sure its getting rediculous for you.
I am, have been, and remain an advocate of always given awards to a predetermined # of competitors in each age group, or range, and to combine those that don’t have enough to equate to any. Why would anyone argure with this. It is equal and fair regardless of age, sex, size, etc…This is basically what they do w/ IM qualifying slots.
In a former life I was RD for a couple hundred races of all kinds. Swims,runs, tris, bike, du s, mtb triathlons, and have heard some unreal responses and “pleas” from folks. My bias is to look at last years event and award the top 10 % of each class. so if there are 100 participants in mens 30-34 awards go 10 deep. If you only have two guys you have to win to get an award. I could not believe it one time when an upper age group guy complained that their age group had three participants and only two trophies. Say what? I have even had people take their 5th place trophy to the trophy maker and make it bigger, lots bigger, like three feet high bigger. Whatevers.
I guess old futs need love too, but awards are an expense to all participants and every race that we went 3 deep in the 60 plus five year age groups we had trophies to throw away post awards.
Actually each age group gets at least one IM qualifying spot regardless of the number of entries.
I think that the original poster has a very good point. Age groups are there to encourage people as they age and due to the nature of aging are no longer able to compete for the overall race (unless they cheat with synthetis hormones :-).
So, why do the race directors now have elite, elite age-group and age group? That is about 3 categories for those in their prime physiological years. Makes sense? Not really.
I remember seeing some information from USAT in the past several years asking that all sanctioned events have 5 year age groups/awards thru the oldest competitor. I tried looking for that information on the RD section of USAT’s web site and couldn’t find it, but I know I read about it because at the time we were adding in an 80-84 category for the first time for our local sprint. The extra awards are not a huge expense since we recycle awards from year to year - just take the engraved plate off any extra awards and put a fresh one on for the next year.
“Im with you and completely understand the reasoning behind it. Everyone whats a medal for finishing in a race that costs 40 bucks”
I read the OP as someone who was looking for fairness in who he is competing against. There was no mention of wanting a “medal”. Besides, Pete probably has no more medals than many of us combinded. Very few of us would be accepting if we were told on race day you were completing in an age group 15 years younger than you because too few showed up in our age group. Point well made Pete.
I’m in total agreement with you on the predetermined # of awards but as someone who has put on a smattering (very very small smattering of races…) and helped out with a few others the main problem especially in smaller races is that in age groups which don’t even have enough people to round out the 1-3 spots in the age group you can end up actually taking a loss because of the cost of three custom medals when you only had one entrant in that age group! Plus you end up with a bunch of extra medals… Difficult problem to solve. Not sure how to get around it. I’ve had RDs give me medal rain checks, medals with the wrong wording on the back (usually women’s instead of men’s) and stuff like that. I don’t personally care much if I even get a medal but I remember back when I first started I definitely though that the medals were pretty cool.
I’m just going to be a bit stupid here, but, triathlons are the only races (except IM) that doesn’t give out finisher’s medals and triathlons are the most expensive races. I did a swim around a pier. There were perhaps 300 competitors - mass start. It cost $15, $20 if you wanted a shirt. I won second in my AG (50-59) and got a nearly foot high trophy! C’mon the awards don’t cost that much!
You could really cheap out like the Bonelli races used to do. They printed award certificates on a home ink jet printer and then slid the certificates into a plastic casings with refrigerator magnets attached. At least they had a ceremony and recognized the AG winners
“Im with you and completely understand the reasoning behind it. Everyone whats a medal for finishing in a race that costs 40 bucks”
I read the OP as someone who was looking for fairness in who he is competing against. There was no mention of wanting a “medal”. Besides, Pete probably has no more medals than many of us combinded. Very few of us would be accepting if we were told on race day you were completing in an age group 15 years younger than you because too few showed up in our age group. Point well made Pete.
Ummm if the race if there is so few people that they have to combine age groups, who exactly in their age group would they be competing against?
