IRONMAN Announces Performance-Based Qualifying for Kona and 70.3 World Championship

[spudone]

@matate99

@spudone

I think most races will see something like what you are posting. With the exception that when we get into a situation of people turning down slots / not showing up to rolldown, they will increasingly roll to a male - simply because more men are racing.

Even the top 100 was 57 men and 43 women. Unless there are massive rolldowns or more men take their slots, there will be more gender balance at Kona than in most previous (regular) years.

Also keep in mind in their announcement about the return to Kona, they mentioned somehow supporting 3000 people now. So that, plus the decrease in # of full IM races, will somewhat increase the number of slots allocated per race compared to years past.

[Lurker4]

My next thought is, tightening standards when you have a large pool of customers makes sense.

Tightening standards when you have a declining pool of customerss might make the top echelon happy, but will it encourage more participation at the bottom?

So in reality what does this change accomplish other than deciding which cohort gets offered slot first? I’m just drawing on my own experience here of being able to look at the number of slots and then knowing/gambling how close I can get. Now I’m racing as close to a world class time standard as possible, relative to someone else racing against a different time standard. Hmmm…

I’m now thinking about what business models are there where lack of transparency combined with a high barrier to entry increases sales?

I’ll just add this might be better, more fair from a performance perspective than before. I’m curious how it works for them as a business decision. I know several slower guys who literally chase multiple races across the world, going for a slot to world champs (and it seems to work most times eventually), and now they will have no shot.

[stevej]

I’m starting to question these indexes and if the 20% is too large of a sample that is skewing things. I would be curious to see what the indexes looked like if you took the top 5% and top 10% of kona finishers from each ag over the last 5 years.

20% seems to benefit ag’s with that are less competitive and have more of a gap between 1st and say 20-30th place. That will make their index lower. Versus the 30-34, 35-39, etc that have highly competitive races and less finish variation and therefore higher indexes.

[Tribike53]

another way to calculate the time you need to get the last slot would be to find the 40th (assuming 40 slots) position person (after standard is applied) and then divide it by your AG’s standard

Example:
At IMWI 2019 the 40th place person after kona standard applied had a modified time of 9:40:09. To get the equivalent in M40-44 you would divide this by that AGs standard (.9683) to get what you need to finish in to get the last spot. In that case it would be 9:59:09

[latkin]

I think this is a very good system, kudos to IM and sportsstats. IMO it threads the needle remarkably well, far far better than any of the proposals anyone had floated around here (including any of my own ideas).

• Keeps a fixed number of slots per race that can be announced ahead of time, and used by athletes to plan what races to register for
• Keeps same-day allocation (i.e. you either got a slot or not at awards, no waiting until end of season)
• Keep qualification fully self-contained to just your race on your day, i.e. no biases around fast/slow courses, or good/bad weather
• Although their write-up of the system is rather dense and inscrutable, it’s actually a pretty simple and elegant system. It will take time for it to sink in for everyone, but once you “get it”, it’s really not complicated at all.

My own summary of the system, for those still confused:

• AG winners get automatic slots, with rolldown only to AG top 3 maximum
• Everybody else at the race, all ages and genders, is lumped into a single “age group” and ranked based on their “normalized” finish time.
  • Which is just your finish time that day multiplied by a magic number that IM provides based on your gender and age.
  • That magic number is based on the last 5 years of Kona finish times. The idea is like 30 year old men were the fastest AG at Kona over the past 5y. The top 50 year old men at Kona last 5y were on average 10% slower than that, the top 40 year old women at Kona last 5y were 30% slower, etc. So this year for KQ purposes at all other races, all the 50 year old men get a 10% handicap, the 40 year old women get a 30% handicap, etc.
• This giant “age group” has all of the remaining slots for the race, and has an unlimited rolldown like old times.

Overall I really like it and I think it’s quite fair. Some things that come to my mind as interesting consequences or downsides:

• In principle it’s super easy to show you your live normalized KQ ranking in the app. But you absolutely need an app to do it, it’s not practical at all for someone to figure out their ranking, or even their normalized time “manually”. Which is a downside compared to it previously being obvious if you finished in the top N of your AG.
• The new system will be much less “romantic”. It will become very very hard to get a “lucky” slot with a deep rolldown or an unusually soft age group. The big losers here are the “on the bubble” folks and less competitive people in small AGs who were lucking out in the past. The big winners are objectively fast people who used to get unlucky. I think we are losing a little bit of KQ “magic” and “drama” here, but that’s necessary to increase objectivity/fairness.
• The only big opportunity for “romance” or “luck” now is the top-3 rolldown. Small AGs are disproportionately benefiting here, since top-3 might be half the AG for older/women’s AGs, but only 5 or 10% of a bigger AG.
• The system still works for races with cancelled swim, but I think it does introduce some bias. With no swim, bike and run are now more heavily weighted, and I think men and younger AGs benefit here. Of the three sports, bike performance is the most tied to raw muscular power, where men/young will dominate. So if, women are 20% slower than men at s/b/r, then maybe they are 22% slower at b/r (made up numbers). But the normalized time system will still only give women a 20% handicap.

[Changpao]

@stevej

@SBRcanuck

I like it as well. Happy for all my female friends that got to go to Kona, but seemed a little unfair for someone to get a roll down slot and go because they placed like 20th out of 30 in their AG…

Fast women in competitive AG’s are big winners here with the new system.

I find my AG (50-54) can vary in competitiveness vs. those closest to it. For instance, I might finish 4th in my AG with a time good enough to win 45-49. I might also win my AG with a time that would have me off the podium in the 55-59 AG. I like that this new system eliminates that random element.

[Triingtotrain]

@walie

I wonder how many instagram influeners plans of nabbing a 40th place roll down just went up in smoke

[timbasile]

@matate99

Name Country Gender AG AG Rank Overall Time Overall Rank Index Kona Time KQ Rank
Mary Reed United States Female F60-64 1 11:19:12 148 0.7218 8:10:15 1
Peter Algert United States Male M55-59 1 9:30:55 8 0.8667 8:14:49 2

The unexpected benefit to this system is that you can now have virtual (age/gender graded) winners. We usually think that the best athlete is the one to cross the line first, but under this system you now have a handy way to compare across ages/genders.

In this case, I think its pretty cool that an F60 “won” the race. Usually we’re looking at 25-45 groups to figure out who was fastest.

[spudone]

@stevej

I’m starting to question these indexes and if the 20% is too large of a sample that is skewing things. I would be curious to see what the indexes looked like if you took the top 5% and top 10% of kona finishers from each ag over the last 5 years.

20% seems to benefit ag’s with that are less competitive and have more of a gap between 1st and say 20-30th place. That will make their index lower. Versus the 30-34, 35-39, etc that have highly competitive races and less finish variation and therefore higher indexes.

They should probably use the median time of that 20% instead of the average, but what do I know

[stevej]

@spudone

@stevej

I’m starting to question these indexes and if the 20% is too large of a sample that is skewing things. I would be curious to see what the indexes looked like if you took the top 5% and top 10% of kona finishers from each ag over the last 5 years.

20% seems to benefit ag’s with that are less competitive and have more of a gap between 1st and say 20-30th place. That will make their index lower. Versus the 30-34, 35-39, etc that have highly competitive races and less finish variation and therefore higher indexes.

They should probably use the median time of that 20% instead of the average, but what do I know

That’s a good point as well.

[timbasile]

@cphilrun

I don’t know for certain, but I do know that there is a lot of flexibility in timing systems. So my educated guess is yes, they can do do the calculations on the fly and have your adjusted time show up in the results as soon as you’re done. Your final overall “adjusted placing” would have to wait until everyone has finished because it’s possible that the last finisher could rank fairly high if they are in the oldest age categories.

If they do it right, you can still have adjusted placing update in real time as people cross the line. Even today, if I start up front on the swim and then finish 3rd in my AG, I can have my placing bumped by someone who started further back in the swim. Any tracker that knows what its doing can handle this quite easily.

Same for overall placing, so it wouldn’t be too hard to create a field that shows ‘adjusted overall placing.’

Obviously, we won’t know until next morning if our placing stuck. However, if they did it right, you should be able to see where you are at each timing mat / end of each segment. So for the faster age groups, you could got to bed knowing that you were 25th off the bike, and you had a decent run, so probably you’re fine.

[Lurker4]

@marquette42

Takes away the magic of the roll down

Ya, this to me feels like the real danger. Ironman made magic with the process, at least to my eyes. Getting so close and just barely missing the roll down encourages people to find another race while they are sitting there. I can’t imagine sitting down at a roll down thinking, “well let’s look at another race, maybe I can get closer to 9hrs there.” I just take my shot and decide not to race the marginal race if it doesn’t work out. Is that good for IM?

[cphilrun]

Yes, you are correct. I was thinking more of your final placing. As you say you won’t know that until the last person has finished.

[timbasile]

I added the suggestion as an edit above, but if they did it right you should be able to know where you stood after the bike (or even after every timing mat)

[cphilrun]

It is a good point. IM did say they were removing outliers from the dataset. So in theory, your average and median values should be much closer together.

[Lurker4]

@walie

I wonder how many instagram influeners plans of nabbing a 40th place roll down just went up in smoke

Agree. And as humorous as that is, is it a good business decision to burn the plans of your top influencers?

[latkin]

@timbasile

Obviously, we won’t know until next morning if our placing stuck, however.

You don’t need to wait until the next day, or even the last finisher. It’s quite possible to get a notification on race day, even before the race is done, when your normalized ranking becomes “locked”.

They know everyone’s AG, their handicap, and their start time, so at some point during the day there are not enough people still out on the course (AG and start time adjusted) to change your ranking, or perhaps change it more than N places out of the slots.

[giventotri]

@walie

I wonder how many instagram influeners plans of nabbing a 40th place roll down just went up in smoke

I’m back to my original strategy: Outlive everyone, qualify in the 90–94 AG.

[timbasile]

@stevej

I’m starting to question these indexes and if the 20% is too large of a sample that is skewing things. I would be curious to see what the indexes looked like if you took the top 5% and top 10% of kona finishers from each ag over the last 5 years.

20% seems to benefit ag’s with that are less competitive and have more of a gap between 1st and say 20-30th place. That will make their index lower. Versus the 30-34, 35-39, etc that have highly competitive races and less finish variation and therefore higher indexes.

I’m sure IM has self-correcting mechanisms, but its worth noting that the system is actually wants to work against self-correction.

Let’s say, for example that M55-59 is underweighted. e.g. more athletes from that age group qualify for Kona than they probably should due to an error in calculation or some random statistical fluke. For the sake of argument, let’s give them a really generous number, say 0.50 and let in a bunch of M55-59 athletes.

What this means is that weaker athletes, on average, will qualify from that age group vs other age groups. Then, when they recalculate the numbers next time (next year? next 5 years?) they’ll find slower athletes in Kona from that age group, and the next batch of numbers will underweight that age group again.

Ok, so this probably isn’t that big a deal, but its probably worth IM paying attention to the effect - they have to actively manage the numbers, rather than just run the numbers blindly. That they’re taking top 20% vs the median mitigates against this, mostly.

[devashish_paul]

I think it is easy. You get your finish time and they you multiply by the factor in the table for your age group, now you know your “virtual finish time”. It should nevertheless be calculated in the back end by sportstats and fed to the ironman app, so you should get your raw time, your age graded time and your age graded position.

Now if there are 30 slots in your race and 16 slots go to winners, then there are 14 left. If your age graded time is in top 14, you have a slot and you know right in the app based on our age graded time and age graded position, and your wait for the rolldown if outside of the top 14. It should all be displayed in the app though (I assume that is coming).