She almost certainly would have outbiked everyone, but I think Laura would have run her down. Maybe Kat too.
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The spare wasnât the problem, it was the tyre being damaged such that she needed a new wheel or tyre to fix the issue. She did a quick interview during the broadcast.
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Amnesia. Your avatar freaks me out!
That is all.
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1st place thru 10th for males last year was around 20 minutes. For the womenâs race this year it was around 50 minutes⊠Do with that info as you like
It was 46 minutes and 2 of the very top competitors dropped out at the last minute or had mechanicals. Put Anne and Lucy in the mix and your top 10 is a top 8, which makes the stat then goes down to 38 mins.
Itâs also worth comparing the podium vs top 10 - since what is more likely is that Phillip (and to a lesser degree Matthews) arguably had such a great day as to potentially skew the results. Last year, the difference for the menâs podium and a top 10 was 12 mins. For them women, it was 20 mins (without Lucy and Anne).
The other thing is that the womenâs race is almost an extra hour, or about 12%. So 20 mins is really equivalent to 17 mins.
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Laura would not have gotten moto towed up the hill as much as she did today had she been in the 2nd place. Maybe she would have caught Knibb on the run, thatâs possible, but itâd have been a race.
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I wanted something Australian so a big muscle bound kangaroo in a fighting stance seemed aptâŠ!!
So, my initial take on that is itâs easy to point to moto pacing as the reason the front blew the rest away. But Laura didnât start in the front. However, she did seem to have a 3-4 bike escort bringing her there. It would be nice if the motos in the race had trackers so you could see who was getting those escorts.
If itâs cheating to enter the draft zone for a minute, surely itâs even worse to have an arms length arrangement with a friendly media moto to escort you to the front.
We should not down play the reasonable likelihood of these things happening. A sport that has athletes using drugs for an advantage would have various race day grey area tricks like this too.
Is there any organized effort to monitor and look for this stuff?
Are you proposing a hypothesis where a contender paid off a moto man to tow her up the road? At least it came across that way.
Or are you saying that there is a possibility of this, so we need to make the moto drivers are squeeky clean and have no allegiances to the racers. If we think thatâs a problem in triathlon, imagine in pro cycling
Great race, like Nice, hopefully it stays as a World champs venue.
Wonder if Kat regrets all the racing sheâs done this year, not sure it would have made a difference to the result in the end.
What happened to India Lee?
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Not exactly, although I suppose it could be theoretically possible. Iâm suggesting itâs entirely possible, even likely, that two independent parties who have some affiliation outside of racing, or even just simple tribalism instincts pulling for âtheir guyâ or âtheir girlâ would act in a way that could benefit their preferred athlete.
Iâve been on professional sports fields where photographers signaled things to players. Where officials walked over to players in between plays or after games and gave them insights into what happened and what they should have done, etc.
At a bare minimum we can say the cameras were on Laura because she was the story of chasing from behind. But there were other strong cyclists who also could have been that story. Did Sodaro have 3-4 bikes on her?
I think that would be pretty easy for her to answer, no she wouldnât regret all the racing she has done thus far. It has gotten her a lot of big placings, a lot of money, and looks like perhaps a win in the Ironman series. Is there something that you think if she skipped, that she would have run a 2;44 in this race?? Is that something one would expect from her on her best day in this race???
no question but then the gap form 10th to 20th was very similar
and if i get a bit creative and take 10 th to 19th place the female gap is narrower.
i would think the gaps top 10 in female kona 23 vs male kona 24 will be narrower
the main question is what do you propose needs to be done to get more females into the sport at the end of the day one could make an argument that knibb is the best triathlete at 70,3 if you take the gender gap into consideration and the likes like mathews haug phillipp charles etc are top but one of the issues is while there is parity in price money it gets just harder for a good females to get good sponsorship . and to live of price money only works if you make top 3s in which case you actually dont really need price money as the sponsors pay well . dont forget if you come 7th in roth you get like 700 euro .
point is there is still inequality in sponsorship as it drops of way quicker in females than the guys .
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For IM, it really isnât that competitive for the ladies. Once we knew Haug and LCB were out it was really between LP and KM
However for middle distance, the ladies definitely matches or comes close to the men at the highest levels. Would like to see some of the middle distance specialist move up to do full distance, namely AG, IS and FD?
Yes sponsorship inequality is a big issue!
why do you think mathewa could not run 2.44 they are both very evenly matched in run quality.
Today is a mixed emotions day. My wife would have loved that course and I canât help but reflect on that and the opportunities athletes not suited to Kona had with that race rotation.
I love the idea of alternating out of Kona just because of the field limitations on the pier. Nice is a brilliant course but I felt the support was lacking. There has been almost zero local publicity (that I have seen).
I canât help but wonder how good that would be in Frankfurt or Roth where spectators are 10 deep in parts of the course.
Do you think that Nice, France Womenâs Race was a real success for a world champoinshipsâŠ1 100 finishers 
Iâd rather see both Men and Women in Kona with equal participants !
Yes, these numbers are just too low.
I assume Nice could host a Friday + Sunday dual championship weekend. I think that would change things up assuming Kona canât host a double header Fri-Sun format.
My thought is the separate days of racing is awesome (as proven in the 70.3 worlds too), but that having them 6 weeks apart and a half a world apart does not help.
Letâs move the full championship to Nice with both genders and have a Kona general entry (fill out all the legacy backlog and open it up but have no pro field there that year). The sport survived just fine without a championship in Kona during the Covid19 years.
I really donât think Ironman needs Kona anymore. It served its purpose during its time, but the sport can survive just fine without it. The racing this weekend was fantastic (and I was generally uninterested with Daniela out and Lucy out but when I played it back, it was great).
I also assume a European time zone venue gets more eyeballs on the coverage than hawaii.
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Also they should can the IM France in June and just have a 70.3. If not people can just race in June on roughly the same course for less money. It makes the âfinalsâ less of an attraction if you can play on the same field without qualification
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