I don’t think there is the same depth of field in the younger age groups in North America as there is in Europe. My hunch is if you look at the top younger age group results from worlds they are highly concentrated with European athletes we are “pre pro” or “almost pro”. That cohort in North American racing I THINK is less so you may see less young people in North America make it to the top tier of North America racing age graded results.
On the other hand the 50+ age groups at worlds probably have a sprinking of racers from all over the world, All the older athletes from the world benefit from the top 20% from worlds (who are also from around the world), but the younger age groupers in North America are kind of penalized by the fast 18-29 year old Europeans who are dominating worlds because they are just not as fast.
So my conclusion so far is that if you want to qualify, as a strong, younger all-around athlete, you should choose a slow race with as large a gap as possible between the older age groups.
This will definitely make some different races more attractive and will attract the top age groupers chasing fast finish times to “slower” races.
My gut feeling is the top women in Kona are closer to the top men. But at the regular race the women only get “corrected” based on how much slower the top women are in Kona, not how they are doing relative to the male field in the local race, so it may be that the “average KQ range women in the local event” are penalized by the top 20 percent fast women at Kona in the calculation
Well something doesn’t make sense in that chart because every gender age group still gets 1 slot no matter what the performance rankings are. so unless in some of those groups there were literally no racers
Oh wait, I thought it was the 100 top age graded based on 100 slots available, If not this should be shown based on slots available. If the 46 women in the top 100 happen to be between 40-100 and there are only 50 slots for example, then that’s not a lot of slots that would have gone to women at LP. On the other hand if there were 46 women in the top 60, then its not a lot of men going to Kona.
