It appears that Steve Larsen is the latest to throw his hat into the ring. I can’t wait to see what a steady 350watts can do on the pancake flat PCB bike course!!! The Germans look strong on the women’s side with Katja Meyers, Katja Schumaker, and Uta Muekel…along with Americans Wendy Ingraham, Lauren Jensen, Tina Paulson, and duathlete Rachel Sears in her IM debut. The total pro field is up over 85 now.
this is something i don’t understand. it seems that ironman north america has decided to split the pro hawaii spots 50/50 at all of their races, regardless of the number of entries. now it’s not that hard to qualify at most north america races anyway, but it doesn’t seem quite right. what’s wrong with doing it proportionally?
brent
“what’s wrong with doing it proportionally?”
I don’t have any problem with your reasoning, but it gets to be a equal rights, Title-9 type of question. I think IM slots/prize money should reflect the actual amount of competition, but that is rarely the case. Lifetime Fitness wasn’t perfect, but at least it had less of an “entitlement” aspect to it.
I’m now donning my flame retardent suit…
I’ll bet they are simply doing what WTC tells them to do.
well, for what was considered an age group race in the past seasons, this year the pro field will be one of best of the season excluding hawaii.
Sergio Marques
- look how many want a slot in each AG for each sex.
- then assign the number of slots accordingly.
And this is one way you get a much more lopsided number of men. Yes, there (currently) are more men than women in all IM races. I will give you that. But, the Kona slots are not divided up on pure numbers, but rather on a “check the box” system. Divide the spots up on pure numbers within the age groups and throw out the “check the box”.
In doing my own informal research, there are way more males who say the want to qualify for Kona (but really, don’t have much of a chance) versus women in the same boat. Most women I talk to outside of the 9-10 hour range say, “I could never qualify, so why check the box.” So, our numbers are lower than they should be and I try to get every woman, no matter where they may finish, to enter with Kona qualifying as a “YES”. Really, who would want to see 1,700 30-34 year old men race? Charlie Crawford doesn’t have that many referees!
Um…I’m pretty positive I have not been asked to “check the box” for any of the IM North America Ironman’s I have done.
But I do like the idea.
Are you pretty, pretty sure about that?
I was just looking at the registration for Blackwater/Eagleman 1/2IM and the check box is there. Now that isn’t an IMNA event, but it is a Kona qualifier.
I thought that was how all of the qualifiers worked.
It’s been on the race application in the past, I know at Half Vineman and IMNZ. And, in NZ this year, they were asking if you were wanting to qualify for Kona at registration and you could change your “NO” to “YES” right then.
I have done IM-FL, IM-WI and was not asked if I wanted to earn slot/qual. I have been askedto check at other qualifiers. (Back in the day when there was lots of Olymoic distance and 1/2 Im’s as qualifiers).