20 minutes? You are daydreaming or disconnected with reality or a bit of both ;).
Have you heard of T100? They have 20 m draft zones and no uber biker is putting 10 minutes on any of the top athletes. This a bit of optimistic fantasy in Lionel and Sam L’s minds, but Lionel was a huge advocate of the 20 m in mid distance, T100 accommodated, once he realized he wasn’t as strong as he thought compared to the top guys.. he is not even racing the series anymore.
I do think 20 m is the way to go, it simply won’t change the results other than some guys getting dropped from the bike packs.
The interesting thing about the draft zone change is it still doesn’t answer the question of the “fastest” triathlete. Not that it would make a great long term product, but it would be fascinating to see how fast someone can go if they started with a pure time trial swim, bike, and run, no other athletes near to draft at all. You really have less of an idea how to take the race on if you aren’t racing someone else, but putting it all on the line at every stage and hoping you’ll hold it together by the end.
And every weakness is exposed. I guess athletes like Lucy, Knibb and Laidlow would shine through at the longer distances.
So many others pushing for non(less) draft on the bike ultimately benefit on the swim, bike, and often run from conserving energy, pacing with the group etc.
And while we are at it, take away all their gadgets and screens too!! The fastest triathlete is the one that wins on the day, often going faster because of others. That is why world best times in just about every sport are done with others right there, and not some time trial in a tunnel.
Realistically, the only way to make it “as fair as possible” is to do an actual time trial format. And, we have seen some of it in the past with the 3 athletes time trial/separate heats challenge (forgot the name) race. Also, that other pandemic IM race that Frodo hosted where Lionel self invited himself to “challenge” Frodo, it wasn’t an actual TT per se, but since Frodo dropped Lionel after 10 m in the water, it became a TT with Frodo creaming him and putting time on him across three disciplines. It was really boring to watch and the result wasn’t much different compared to the dozens of times that Frodo beat him in other races. Oceanside comes to mind, leading from start to finish a couple of times, but at least it was exciting to see Lionel and the other guys duking it out for places. So in my mind, the more we trend towards a pure TT format, results are the same give or take but makes it boring to watch.
Yes, just because you yielded the result desired does not make your actions any less embarrassing. However, like shame, it’s an internal emotion. So I suppose you feel victorious or something. Here is your virtual cup of Cap’n Crunch.
I guess we can give kudos to the PTO for not shilly-shallying around and going straight to 20m from the very first race (Challenge Daytona, 2020) and sticking to that in all subsequent PTO Opens and the T100 Tour, having the insight to realise it would offer a better racing dynamic, for Pros.
Do we even know if it led to be a “better” race dynamic? We’ll see. I’'ll say is what we haven’t seen is a long course race with a 20m draft zone. So now we’ll see it.
Anyone who doesn’t sit in the group as part of their race strategy. So LCB, Knibb, Lovseth are the easy picks.
Though you could also argue that it might serve to pry apart the Matthews/Phillip “no you go first” dynamic which has been happening - which is on paper good for both of them.
(and on that note…) Let me just let out a sigh as I mourn strategic decision making and its impact on race dyanamics….
Pretty much. My gut instinct is that this is mostly reactionary given T100 / Roth had both moved to 20m, regardless of whether it’s actually “better” for racing. See, for example, they haven’t finalized how this will actually work in operation, and won’t until the official competition rules roll out next month.
I’m hoping we’re wrong on the race dynamic point. Ditlev made the point that he’d be more apt to attack off the front, so I’m hoping that this leads to more dynamic racing. Though obviously he’d say that.
I guess we’ll see come championship season whether it was the right move or not. The pro series will give a good preview but its really Kona that will decide whether or not this is worth it from a racing perspective. The post-covid races have all been absolute bangers (at least as much as 8-9hr races can be) so it will be a high bar to clear.
I welcome the change, not because I think it will have any significant impact at the race dynamics and results. Iden made a funny comment on Strava joking about how it doesn’t matter but he took it down as it had some sexual innuendo…not as bad ( I thought) if we remember European’s use cms and not inches. But it will hopefully put an end to the argument and criticism that if someone stays in the pack and wins the race on the run, it was because they were borderline drafting, this is obviously fueled by certain influencer that got all his minions to to whine about increasing to 20 m many years ago, and now he doesn’t even race T100 once the competition got a bit intense
