So, other posts on ST have stated there was ridiculous drafting in Clearwater - hardly surprising if you start 300 guys in the same wave on a flat course and they all come out of the water within a few mins.
so the question is, in the interest of making the race fair in 2007, how do you prevent it?
Breaking up the waves more and seperating them by bigger time intervals is the obvious choice but this can lead to unfair conditions within the same AG as winds kick in and heat builds up. Not to mention the uncertainty of whether you are leading your AG or not while on the course.
So perhaps breaking up the waves by seeding is the answer? The question then is to how to then seed fairly? Perhaps the best way to do this do this by your qualifying finish time as a percentage of the winning pro time? That should somewhat account for course differences although I think tougher courses tend to impact age groupers more than pros…
That is the opposite of what you want to do. You’d be further jamming everyone together into clumps of like speeds. You could alternate “fast” and “slow” waves to effectively double the time between them (e.g., M35-39, then W40-50, then M40-44, W51+, etc).
Or you could construct waves that represent a slice of the field’s speed (e.g., the wave is not by age group but rather has people of all speeds). Of course, this would be really lame.
Oh, and CUT THE DAMN FIELD DOWN by a third. Raise the fee to keep revenue the same. You could still easily fill 1000 slots at $400.
some things that I talked about with Jimmy include, and I might not remember all that we covered to help reduce this situation.
Waves by your AG only, bigger time gaps between waves, fast wave then slow wave, starting everyone 65+ w/ the female pro’s, The city was willing to shut down Clearwater for 8hrs so take advantage of it, re-arrange the bike course to get some hills later in the race instead of having the steepest hill in the first and last 4k of the ride
don’t you have pretty much “like speeds” anyway being the World championships? isn’t it better to clump into 3 groups than 1? surely that would be easier to police?
I think one of the biggest problems was that the 18-29 went right after the 30 somethings. Our good swimmers swim faster than the good 30 year old swimmers. this basically merged the FOP guys from our wave with your wave and is the reason qcassidy and i were riding with you.
Someone mentioned that if they swam faster, then they wouldn’t have to deal with it. Wrong. There were probably around 10 guys from my wave who were out in sub 25:30, and they could all ride fast. That certainly causes problems.
Lets face it nothing works… Triathlon is full of class-A w*nkers! If you don’t want to be in a drafting race then choose a small one. Try and win it if you don’t think that’s enough of a challenge. Race time trials or x-terra instead. Get back to the roots and ignore the “false gods” of ITU or WTC.
If you want to draft enter a road race and learn the real meaning of pain…
The answer is with you the athlete and not the organisation…
SteveMc
Waves by your AG only, bigger time gaps between waves, fast wave then slow wave, starting everyone 65+ w/ the female pro’s, The city was willing to shut down Clearwater for 8hrs so take advantage of it, re-arrange the bike course to get some hills later in the race instead of having the steepest hill in the first and last 4k of the ride \\
This is the exact same thing I said 7 months ago about this race. It’s in a thread here, and there was much discussion on it. It is what they did at the Oceanside race, and it worked beautifully. They knew what to do, and didn’t. I can only assume that Jimmy has no control of what happens, and he is told what to do. They do not care about the actual race. They get a full race, with all the entry fees, and no matter what they do, people come back, no matter how bad the actual event. It is shamefull, and I’m so glad that I opted out of the race last minute. I know how I will prevent getting caught up in the drafting at this event, I will not go there. I will do what you all should do, and speak with the pocket book, because that is all they hear. They don’t care about your grumblings when you wait in line right after their races, and fight over who can give them money faster for next year. I had high hopes for this event, but they let us down in the worst way, and they know better.
I think one of the biggest problems was that the 18-29 went right after the 30 somethings. Our good swimmers swim faster than the good 30 year old swimmers. this basically merged the FOP guys from our wave with your wave and is the reason qcassidy and i were riding with you.
OK, but then one can take the time of the slowest swimmer of a AG, subtract the time of the fastest swimmer of the following group, add a bit for safety and you have more or less the gap required between two groups. Everybody rides with the same conditions. True the overall time may be harder to compare, but that maybe the price to pay. In Kona they have decided to split the pros from the AGs, so it’s not a quantum leap to do the same for each AG. And if the event takes all day, so what?
You can look at splits and tell which draft packs people were in. In my wave, M18-24, M25-29, and M40-44 the guys who swam a sub 26 and rolled into T2 in the first big group all rode 2:12. While this group was a huge mess in the begining, everything spread out towards the end.
The guys who swam 26+ ended up in the next group back. If you swam a 30, then you rode a 2:08. If you swam a 28, then you rode a 2:10. It is real shame when you see a guys average speed for the first 30 miles as 25.3 mph and the last 25 miles (which were a little harder) as almost 27mph. Those were the guys in the second pack. The second pack was blatantly drafting. They caught the lead group of 20+ riders (which was strung out and legal) right before T2. They had roughly 100 guys in their group. Look 'em up. They should be proud of their group riding skills.
Monty, clearly the only real answer. But most would rather complain, than really fix it. These large races are a BUSINESS. Not a race. Wonder when some will finally get it.
I actually think they will really work to improve the situation for next year. I also do not think WTC really gives a crap about the fairness of the AG race with regard to drafting. The reason they will try to fix the situation is the cost of insuring the race will probably go up dramatically if they do not do something to address the packs. There were a lot of accidents out there, and accidents cost WTC money in the form of the insurance premiums they will have to pay for next year. They will come up with a solution, and they will pretend it is to address the drafting, but their true reasoning with be so their preiums don’t go up. I honestly don’t think they would change a thing if there were not any accidents.
I would think with today’s technology that a company that does the timing could come up with a chip that was attached to every bike that monitored the distance between riders. I’m sure that they could make it “smart” enough to determine if one rider was passing another or if they were in a “pack” drafting. This chips could automatically assign penalites to the persons bike time. Obviously there would be a lot of little things that would have to be worked out but it’s just an idea.
That wouldn’t have really changed anything in Clearwater. You have way too many athletes of a similar caliber starting the bike at the same time. There is not enough space to accomodate the athletes and a 7m buffer zone.
i wouldn’t. money is not my bottom line. integrity is. It sounds like there are at least some people there wanting to make a change. We need to lobby for them so that they can be heard. Perhaps we should all send an email to the appropriate person at WTC? Monty/Dan, could you give us an email?
i wouldn’t. money is not my bottom line. integrity is. It sounds like there are at least some people there wanting to make a change. We need to lobby for them so that they can be heard. Perhaps we should all send an email to the appropriate person at WTC? Monty/Dan, could you give us an email?
Dan www.aiatriathlon.com
When you get that info, would you start a separate thread on it and enlist people to send in their emails? I think that will garner a lot more attention, and thus, emails.
This is the exact same thing I said 7 months ago about this race. It’s in a thread here, and there was much discussion on it. It is what they did at the Oceanside race, and it worked beautifully.
It is becoming ever-more-apparent that the only fair bike course is a hilly one. Oceanside is fair, Lake Placid is fair, Timberman, some others. These flat and semi-flat courses are just all wrong for a high-stakes non-drafting race. There need to be climbs at several points in the race to create separation between the weak and the strong.