Maybe someone can let me know why there is an equality imperative that exists for the classification of humans in one dimension (say gender), and not another imperative for equal representation if you classify humans in another dimension, say age group?
Is it any less discriminatory to say there are less slots for 70 year or 18 year olds? If you want to say, “Well, there just aren’t as many 70 and 18 year olds racing…” the appropriate response is, “Correct, and there just aren’t as many women racing either.”
Difference between binary and spectrum, perhaps.
But (and I was unclear) the equality I think is imperative is the men having their own race and not having the women interfere with their competition. And vice versa.
So separate race days (which have to be at least two days apart for logistic reasons passim).
It’s just about money, right? The current social climate is that equal gender participation is good, full stop. We can have a debate about whether that’s good/bad, right/wrong, but the social (and by extension) financial incentive is to promote equal participation. You can write the headlines yourself. “In a huge step for women’s rights, IRONMAN enshrines equal participation for ALL women” vs. “By setting entry limits IRONMAN continues their crusade against women”.
I suppose you’re right, but it’s completely unfair that the young single mom age group gets less slots than the retired male lawyer age group. Ironman should do something to rectify this combination of discrimination.
The current orthodox opinion is that discrimination can only occur in direction of oppressor to oppressed. An oppressed group, by rule, cannot discriminate in a harmful way. Women are considered to be an group oppressed by men, therefore gender discrimination against men is impossible.
I think when I did ITU world’s in 1994, the team Canada selection was 10 people per age group across the board. There were around 3 slots at nationals and I think three other qual races with 2 slots each (or something like that this was three decades ago). Result was up to 10 athletes per age group whether it was 70-74 or 18-24 and the same on each side, male and female
It was not based on the number participating in each age group.
But if you did that for Ironmans/70.3 lots of M30-59 would not be unhappy. Let’s say it is a 50 slot 70.3 race, and you have 25 age groups (say 12 and 13) then you end up with 2 slots for every age group regardless.
Yeah, any argument you can make for inclusion of equal amounts of genders can be applied pretty seamlessly to age groups. Boost participation, historical inequities, equal rights, etc. The old equal representation argument.
M30-35 isn’t typically considered a marginalized group. There’s negative social incentive for an organization (MDot or Canuckleheads Triathlon) to promote that group. There’s positive incentive to promote marginalized groups.
It’s kind of like No Child Left Behind. Do you give schools more money for better test scores? In doing so you punish schools for worse test scores, who are most in need of help. Same here, do you reward males for greater participation, thereby punishing females for lower participation? I don’t have any good answers, just tangents.
I think a larger societal question is if males 30-59 are just motivated to race triathlon more than other brackets in their own sex or versus women in all age brackets, or are these men at a societal and phyical advantage when it comes to do triathlon.
Let’s say I take a woman friend of mine when we both raced 40-44. We both had teenage kids, but I am racing an Ironman an entire hour faster than her. That makes the IM “easier for me” than her just because I have more genetic capacity. Let’s not forget that when I travel, I can go for a run at 5 am solo. I go riding solo anywhere in the world not worrying about what will happen to me. Meaning, I just have easier access to training and I have greater phyical capacity. That’s when I was in the middle of the 30-59 bracket. All of these are good reason why less women would compete in the same 40-44 bracket. Does my 40-44 age group at the time deserve more Kona slots than hers? She is just the flag bearer for her peers (I won’t claim to be one for mine), and there a roughly equal number of males and females in 40-44 in our country at the time. So she’s competing with every F40-44 just to get to the start line as am I. There are just more of my peers who make it to the start line.
Should Ironman reward that societal aspects make it easier for M30-59 to arrive at the start line?
I don’t know what answer is correct, but if we say equal men and women at the start line at 70.3 and 140.6 worlds because there are equal men and women globally, I think that’s fine by me. I have zero beef with women in tri slots if it further rewards my women peers who make it to the start line. I know its just harder for women to make start lines based on women in my peer group.
…and I think there is no dialing back to the old days when guys had an overly favourable weighting in slots based on participation numbers. Participation numbers alone don’t have a weighting factor per participant on “how hard was it to make it to the start line”…the women’s groups have all been penalized for 40+ years.
The best thing is making more slots for women is taking ZERO away from males. We’re getting two day championships meaning more males are going than in the old fashioned way, so the expansion for women has expanded opps for males too!!!
This is a unique scenario in gender balancing when creating more advancement for women does not take away from a male candidates !!!
Points well taken, especially about how adding womens slots doesn’t remove men’s slots. I have to assume there would have been massive blowback if they portioned them in a way that removed men’s slots.
There’s are a lot of people, tho, that see any gains by any other group as a direct affront to their group. I’m not particularly concerned with them, but they tend to be rather vocal
To the actual substance tho, does giving women an easier path to KQ obviate the women’s specific challenges to triathlon? If anything it subsidizes slots to women living in safer areas.
It’s kind of affirmative action all over again. At what point has the objective been achieved? If participation stabilizes at 60/40 should there be unequal slots given until participation reaches 50/50? Similarly, you could argue that more slots should be given to less-participated age groups until the participation matches the population.
It really doesn’t matter to me how they do it, I just have a hard time sometimes reconciling the demographic math with the current social incentives.
Just so we’re clear, the female triathlete travelling across the world to compete in a World Championship at their own expense also is unlikely to be a marginalized individual.
Now they might be. But so too might that 33 year old male abuse survivor.
females got 12 medals in taupo males 0 who deserves more slots American males of females ?
And at ironman worlds it was 8 medals for USA females in nice and 1 for males in Kona
And here we argue that USA females get too many slots ?
To add to meeting it seems USA males get too many slots they don’t deserve and take them aways from Australiaans and euro males
Your correct observation about the excellence of US women likely supports the fact that they are not overly disadvantaged in comparison to the general population.
The US men on the other hand are clearly suffering from something. We probably deserve free coaching in addition to extra slots to make up for whatever disadvantages are causing this medal slump.
and my other question is…do WC slots motivate women to participate more? In the end, in both the men’s and women’s races the vast majority are participants aren’t trying to qualify.
Yes they do. If you look at races (in the USA at least) that are Nice vs Kona qualifiers there’s a small bump in female participation in the Kona years. There’s a much larger drop in male participation in the Nice qualifying years as well. So any gain, if there is one, is offset several fold by the drop in men.
I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, because it reads like what you’re gunning for is “I want what we’ve always had: to hell with the injustice and societal issues that created that, and let’s not worry about why women’s participation might need to be handled in a different way than ‘We built it, they didn’t immediately come, so screw ‘em’. Oh, and get those women back in the kitchen, where they belong.”
Lol. This is why these things are hard to talk about. A rational discussion going on about why a company would seek to boost women’s participation, good and bad ways, trade offs, outcomes, the future. But inevitability a white knight arrives to scold everyone for not giving their unquestioning fealty to whatever group is the current victim. This does nothing to add to the conversation, entrenches people in their opinions, and allows no room to learn any new information.
Also, I wouldn’t call getting KQ slots proportional to participation a “injustice and societal issue”.
But in order to have a rational discussion, you need to come to the table in good faith.
“Men need to be given coaching because USA women performed better” is obvious hyperbole, it’s not coming to the table for a legitimate discussion.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we go back to a 1-day Kona where there were equal qualifying slots because there were equal participants at qualifying races. That means slots being taken away from men, by default. Is that what you actually want?
I think Ironman took care of the rational discussion,
No men are losing slots. Men are gaining slots. Women also gaining slots, but their rate of slot gain under the two day system is just greater.
Men are losing nothing on the two day system.
If we go to one day, the horse has left the barn and men will lose slots because the championship will need to be equal men and women. Its about time, there are equal men and women on earth and if it is world championships that’s what you do. There are 8 lanes in the 100m finals for men and women, but there is for sure more boys racing track globally. It does not matter.
The question is if our championship gets 6000 lanes or 3000 lanes but either way its going to be 50/50