Thanks for pointing out my error. In a previous post I actually did provide the link and was going off of memory I can explain where in my brain I combined some numbers and mis-summarized the data.
Here’s the data:
8000 women did a single full distance race in 2023. So you can see if they have 2000-2500 women in a WC it would actually be like 1 in every 3 or 4 women getting a slot to the WC.
Where I think it practical terms it becomes 1 in every 2 or 3 (at times) is there is a high percentage of one and done in every race. Is it reasonable to assume that at about half of the people in a given Iron distance race are actually ever going to race again? Or would even consider racing again in the same year? Some fuzziness there for sure in my mis-remembered off the cuff use of data, but I think you’d agree on one hand, it’s entirely appropriate to have a world championship for a pool of 8000 racers, while on the other from a business perspective it’s VERY VERY VERY aggressive to try to market a race-destination expensive to get to race for 2000-3000 out of a pool of 8000 racers every year to attend your Championship. Check my numbers if I’m wrong (yes, we can talk about the size of the pier and all that), but my impression is IM would like to have a minimum of 2500 racers per day in Kona and more of that if possible at non-Kona locations.