10mins between male and female pro starts then 10mins between pro women and AG in a 70.3 and 15mins in an Ironman.
That would be respectful of the pro athletes especially females IMHO.In practice, in a 70.3, very few MPros are 5 minutes down on the leading woman at T2, and after that it’s the run and it doesn’t matter.
So I’d say 5 would be enough (and fair (MPro > WPro)).
On the WPro to amateurs gap, the top AG men will blast past the women they catch on the bike: again the run doesn’t matter (but see below). So 5 minutes is enough; 10 better; but every minute’s delay is magnified by the full value athletes 6 hours later keeping the bike course closed to motor vehicles.
We can’t do anything about the men who think it’s clever to run alongside the lead women (either an MPro a few minutes down, or a top amateur a few minutes up on her, or a male athlete who’s a poor swim/biker but good enough runner, a whole lap down).
It may actually help the woman (to the detriment of fairness in the WPro race) and it really spoils the telecast coverage (we saw this at Oceanside: why the camera crew didn’t tell the bloke to f off I don’t know). Some management of the finish chute is important too, for presentational purposes.