I was at the 2023 awards and those burritos were money.
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Thanks for the interesting data. Ultimately, I think the central question is how to determine “fairness”.
If you think that “fairness” is an equal number of slots in Kona for men and women in total, then allow the top 2 finishers in each age group to have a spot, any spots not taken roll down that age group, and the “performance pool” should be calculated by gender for each race (i.e. all women are eligible for 1/2 of the performance pool spots, and all men are eligible for the other half, no crossover). If an age group slot rolls down beyond the number in that age group, they go to someone of that gender in the performance pool. If there are any performance pool slots not taken by the assigned gender, then they roll as additional gender-specific slots to the next race on the calendar (potentially increasing the number of performance pool slots at that race). Yes, that means certain age groups will always be more competitive for slots than others, but you should hopefully meet your desired goal of more female athlete inclusion.
At the same time, speaking as a M 50-55 myself (who will never qualify for Kona even with the performance pool unless I make it to roughly 80), I do think some people are quick to blithely dismiss the inclusion bunch of really great M 50-60 athletes because “life is just so easy for us with all of our free time and disposable income”. The society is structured as it is (with regards to age, wealth, gender, etc) without thought for triathlon participation, so thinking that a triathlon hobby can somehow fix a societal issue seems naive. Additionally, for most of us, it’s precisely because we sacrificed our younger and more competitive years working hard and supporting families (just as everyone is rightly quick to point out with the female athletes) that allows us any disposable income and free time we do have in our later years. Yet now, even though the data shows we are a very deep and overall competitive age group, some people have a problem that we are therefore dominant in the performance pool metric. Just keep in mind that everyone in the older age groups was, at one time, also a frustrated 20-40 year old as well. Many never had the chance to qualify at younger ages due to competition for slots, time commitments, career, etc. Even getting to the older age groups injury-free enough to compete at long distance is tough- we break easier and more often. Now, after years of sacrifice, working hard to try to improve our relative performance to the overall field, and somehow avoid the threshing from father time, the ladder gets pulled up in the name of “equity”, so we can get screwed on both ends? Is that fair?
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Fair is arbitrary when there might sometimes be more 18-24 men racing than the entire women’s field.
The problem with identity politics is you are always picking group winners and losers, as the nonbinary discussion reveals. I’m really not sure at all why we’ve skipped over racial minority in favor of females. I think a very solid statistical case can be made that various races have limited access to training options compared to “women” in general. And of course, we can blow all of these outward visual dimensions out of the water when we point out that just because “women” or “black” as a group have statistically significant disadvantages, doesn’t mean the specific high earning lawyer or accountant in question who is a member of one of those groups does.
So we could cut right through all the bull crap, and say if we are really trying to help disadvantaged people from getting to Kona – then actually help those who are disadvantaged. Increase prices across the board, then provide a sliding scale rebate up to 100% off the registration fee based on verified taxable income.
We aren’t saving the world one high powered female CEO at a time when we ignore the poor mom or single dad trying to make ends meet and get to Kona in the process (err, ya, I know…)
There’s not purpose in having a performance pool with you are going to distribute based on equity and not equality. Women are not being disadvantaged so far, they’re receiving slots within the margin of error and receiving a distribution based on equality. They currently represent about 25% of the Ironman racing population. Your proposal will lose Ironman a lot of money, because a lot of women are not going to take slots. So then in your proposal do those get given to men later on or allocated to races for women to NOT take?