The franchise director in Germany (Kurt Denk) officially broke all ties with the national federation (DTU). His company intends to train and hire their own officiating staff and give the drug testing to a third party lab.
That ought to please WTC (maybe WTC even pressured the franchise holder?).
What a chaos… But I bet as long as the money keeps flowing in they don’t care… I for my part think that WTC races are deviating more and more from their roots. Draft-fests on the bike (all bike splits in WTC races are on average 10-20% faster compared to smaller Non-WTC races) and now even the accountability for drug-testing and officiating goes down the drain.
I really wish people wouldn’t be that big suckers for the name “Ironman” and big corporations like WTC.