Let’s start with this premise, we can probably all agree with:
The coverage will inherently suck.
I did think the year that Sodaro and Iden won, the coverage was decent enough, but let’s be real, it’s not something anyone wants to watch that isn’t a huge fan. So if you grabbed 50 random people and said let’s watch this, after 10-15 minutes, they’d respond, “this sucks, can we watch something else.”
No that we got the sucks-all-around disclaimer out of the way, the worst thing imaginable is there would be some bean counter who is giving equal time to the women so we have to watch one woman on the screen biking away from everyone else for 10 minutes instead of the back and forth action in the opening stages of the run for the men.
I would rather trust the producer to show us the story they think is interesting among their various feeds to choose from than to force feed us equal time women or men.
That said, if they do give us extra strength sucking coverage with even more camera options, for us nerds that’s cool. But let’s be real, for everyone else it’s still gonna suck.
Sorry but I (and I’m sure I’m not alone, except maybe on ST) don’t hate IM coverage. I enjoy watching the races, so you’re premise starts with a fallacy.
I do agree they need to have a producer ensuring the race is incredibly interesting for the women’s coverage and I would be surprised if they don’t potentially over-torque in that regard. I do also agree if it’s a bean counter and not a producer it will lead to a terrible production. Based on the already improved production (not close to perfect) of Texas I think they will have something worthy in October of next year.
This is a really frustrating thing. But the other side of the coin is, the women’s field just isn’t as deep and the proportional slots handles it best. Sometimes the podium is separated by 10 minutes, more often it is separated by 30 minutes, occasionally it’s separated by an hour.
Just grabbing a random 35-39 division from IMAZ. Males separated by 27 minutes, females by 48 minutes. Male 55-59, 6 minutes, Female 55-59, 24 minutes. While I’m sure there are contrary examples, if asked to bet, I would bet on average the male podium has a smaller standard deviation than the female. So is it more fair to give a slot to the 3rd place female finisher who was 24 minutes back instead of the 3rd place male one who was 6 minutes back?
The slot allocation can always leave you feeling a bit empty (or exhilarated) depending on how things shake out. Outside of charity and legacy, any male athlete going to Kona is either very good, or just got crazy lucky. I’m sure there are some women who were lucky and have made it too.
That just creates a different problem though. I helped a local race set their start order by analysing past editions of the race - optimising wave gaps and order to minimise the number of interactions (passes) on the course and reduce opportunities for drafting.
Putting the faster athletes last significantly increases the number of interactions and thus risk. That race is able to have the pros start ~40mins earlier which means the leaders are on to the 2nd lap of the ride before the AGs come through - makes it much fairer for the FPros and safer.
Putting fast AG men after the FPros doesn’t create that many interactions, they can be high visibility and occasionally lead to unfairness in the womens race, but it’s much less of an issue now that the standard of the womens race is much higher than in the past (when slow swimmers could get back into the race).
I think they should prioritize the female pro race at Kona over any perceived “interactions” of very experienced AG’ers in course. At other IM’s that’s fine and maybe prudent but not at the WC race with so much on the line for pro women:
I never said you don’t enjoy it. I said that if you aren’t already a huge fan, it sucks. If you’re not a huge fan, and a huge fan turns it on, you’re going to say, “this sucks” at some point. Regardless of the time given to men or women.
My point is, what we had in the past was good enough for huge fans. It’s nice to make it better. Better. Not more equal. There are times I could care less what the men are doing, and show me the women. There are times that’s true in reverse.
For us fans, what we need is not more equality in races, but more cameras covering the action and a producer who is willing to cut to it with a team to talk about it, rather than show the lone leader soloing it. Probably still sucks to anyone not a fan though.
This I agree with and I believe that they will get right for Kona 2026. We’ll see next year. I also think having the race on the same day makes that far more enticing from a producer standpoint as 2 races give more opportunities for action to be occurring.
They could, and did, fill a women’s single day WC. It’s just that it was in Kona. Would have loved to see where we were tracking in terms of athlete registrations in advance of this.
I think we could have had a single day Kona (assuming the more realistic number of roughly 2700 entries, given our conversations with IM) with the following breakdown:
120 pros
1000 men’s qualifiers
1000 women’s qualifiers
300 “initiatives” slots (Women For Tri, whatever other programming IM deems worthy)
280ish Legacy
Yeah. But that also means you’d be taking slots away from men. Which, well, I don’t think was ever on the table.
Kona 2023 Female Finishers: 2174
Kona 2024 Male Finishers: 2491
If I remember correctly, there was a lot of hype about the low number of DNF’s in Kona in 2023. Seems like it didn’t fill then? Do women on average have a higher DNS rate?
Best way to do that would be sending the pros off 40mins beforehand. Interactions are quantifiable - whether they make a difference is where perception comes in.
That’s right. If there are an abundance of slots, women will eventually take them. But that’s not an option in Kona and the Nice women’s uptake was embarrassingly low.
I haven’t done any serious computer programming like this since university days, but it would be a fun project to put all the cohorts and their timing mat times into a database and then start running tests based on start times to find the ideal launch order.
Who said anything about it being equitable? But yes, count me among the people who think it should be an equal number of men and women racing at a World Championship, regardless of an equitable argument (and yes, I know I’m arguing against my own personal interest in ever qualifying, welcome to me and continually voting against my own economic self interest too).
That said, I also completely understand the rationale IRONMAN used here. I don’t buy the “we didn’t look at the money” side of the argument. Of course they did. And if you look at it from a purely business sense, then yeah, where they wound up makes complete sense. I just don’t view that as the “right” thing to do, given that IM is a quasi-governing body and not just a race production business.
@Lurker4 general rule, yes, women are higher rate DNS versus men, and in turn lower rate DNF. Apparently, being stubborn is not beneficial…
How? I’m asking in good faith, how does that make any sense in a participation sport with these demographics? We can’t just wave our hand and change that abject fact. What you purpose is NOT “equal” by a long shot.
