I listened to the POD!!! ok not much info given there and a lot of talk about race strategy that didn’t make sense.
First the talk about a weak swimming good biker not benefiting from 20 m as they would need to burn more matches to pass a group??? no way wrong. That doesn’t make sense.
Also the worry about age groups, no that’s not a real issue. the racers that far back or ones an age grouper can hold with, this is not about them.
lastly saying we think the guy in the back saves alot because we see him sit up a bit ( coming out of aero)… no he just surged and goes hard to coast to not enter the zone so right before he stopped pedaling he surged too much and could guess hes about to enter so sits up a second and sitting up slows you quicker not to enter, you never see that on an uphill juts rollers and slight descents.
riding at the back legally ( right at 12 m) is the hardest skill to hold the right distance ( have to keep watching and getting ready to coast or brake or you have to use a big effort to pass the train, likely why Blu road extra far back at 70.3 worlds until the uphill. As the yo effect the the group like car traffic makes the back guy go high / low power the whole ride , where the front can ride steady.
I haven’t listened yet, but it’s not a new idea so I’ll chime in. This is about how long it takes to pass a group. A paceline of 10 athletes grows from a minimum of 120 meters to a minimum of 200 meters, so the time required to pass them - the duration of your surge - goes up by nearly 70%. You could argue the time limit for passing an athlete will stay at 25 seconds, but then obviously it’s even worse because while the duration is unchanged, you have to work at a higher power.
I imagine it’s a much bigger issue at the speeds at which PROs operate because each additional mile per hour of speed costs you a bigger percentage of threshold power than for us age groupers.
are they talking about the testing results they just did ? otherwise no point to listen to.
and was jimmy asked what he thinks if the draft zone was 20 m but you were allowed to actually slot in over 16 meters as long you are out the draft zone in 20 seconds?
One of the good things about race ranger is that it’s clearly defined whether or not slotting in is permitted. And there usually are some opportunities to slot in or move up/down in the pace line. It still is risk/reward since you have to make sure you don’t end up in the next guy’s zone, but if RR says there’s a gap, there’s a gap.
The 20m zone still makes all this more difficult though
Some kind of change like this would keep the race dynamic, I suspect. I’d even say, 20m draft zone and you can slot in to 12m and have to drop back after that.
Would that actually encourage people to “race” rather than sit in to get that little extra draft benefit?
well it potentially could make it easier to pass a pack of 20 people step by step, and it could have prevented the situation where Long got a blocking penalty when laundry overtook him while he was overtaking athletes.
I would not totally disagree that it is a concern to pass a pack of 20 atheltes so the question is what are the solutions.
ie to think what are the pros and cons, rather we want solution x because thats what we think is best ,or we dont want to change because thats how we always did it.
I suggest we are trying to disrupt the dynamic of weaker or more tactical bikers sitting in a long line, riding at lower power than the rider with their nose in the wind.
A longer draft zone will reduce the power saving dividend and also increase the risk for those close to the back of the pack as they are that much further from the front and may miss a break.
This will improve the race dynamic as stronger riders will want to be near the front.
A longer draft zone will result in more athletes being in (RR) orange and therefore legal slotting in will be easier both to execute and to police. This will mean the concerns expressed ^^ about having to pass ‘n’ riders in one go will be significantly less (a good thing). The time to pass needs to go up in proportion to the draft zone length (so 40 secs for 20m), but drop back still executed in 25 secs.
Lastly the rider on their limit who can hang on at 12m may drop off if the draft zone’s 20m, which means the line will shorten or, if they’re mid pack, they’ll let the gap go and anyone behind will be either alert or screwed. Both these resultant effects will increase the likelihood of reduced size groups (per @Diabolo )
But that dynamic is often broken up by either the Kona winds or by a hilly course. It’s also worth noting that this dynamic doesn’t really happen on the women’s side (it’s important to note that this is a men’s only phenomenon).
I’d argue that in recent memory, the prime beneficiary of this was Lange in 2024 - at least as far as pack rat to win goes.
Via Thorsten, here’s the timing chart. He’s only showing the top athletes, but even here you can see that it gets broken by Waikoloa. Lange comes into T2 with a group of 9 or 10, depending on how you count gaps. And this is the race where the biggest groups happen since the pandemic.
Anyway, my larger point is that this isn’t necessarily a problem. Large reported being barely able to hold on, and subject to considerable yo-yo effect. But the race itself was very entertaining - you had Laidlow and others off the front, Ditlev’s recovery and massive blowups from a lot of guys.
I’d argue that the race would be rendered boring with a larger draft zone and that the draft benefit of the group meant that some were taking risks. It showed that there were meaningful strategic decisions being made: Some went off the front, others sat in the group, and the results showed at the end. Yeah, Lange won, but it’s not like the ‘sit in the group and wait to run type of runner’ is dominating the WCs.
I’ll also argue that the smaller draft zone allows them to take advantage of hilly 70.3WCs since the parcours breaks up the group and introduces the ‘hang with the stronger cyclists on the hills so you can take advantage of the draft on the flats’ dynamic that you wouldn’t get with a larger zone. Kona won’t always be like this - we’ve had a spell of low winds lately and winds will be back.
Again I come back to the sport itself - do we want a real sport with meaningful strategic decisions, or do we want to know who can exercise the best?
I don’t find that argument very convincing. At the last 70.3 world championship, we saw 20 guys coming out of T2 essentially simultaneously onto a narrow single-lane course. If the referees had applied the anti-drafting rules strictly by the book, that race would have immediately turned into a comical farce. In my view, arguing about 12 m versus 20 m is a distraction to avoid having to face the fact that the conception of a triathlon bike leg as a mass-start non-drafting bike race is just not truly workable in practice. The density of talent, especially in the men’s field, is now so high that the swim is no longer sufficient to create enough separation before the athletes leave T2. The problem is further compounded by the existence of flat, narrow, multi-bike courses with hundreds to thousands of athletes on them at the same time. Extending the draft zone to 20 m won’t solve any of this, but it risks making the difference between theory and reality even more visible.
Strong riders already want to be near the front, otherwise we should see the same dynamics on a triathlon bike leg as on the first half of a Scratch race, with riders dropping back as quickly as possible if they are brought to the front. Clearly, the draft benefit of riding at 12 m behind another rider isn’t so large that it can’t be outweighed by being able to ride at your own steady pace in the wind.
I also don’t see how any of this would make races more interesting. If you want more interesting races, making it harder for weaker bikers with strong running legs to stay in the race until the beginning of the run rather sounds like the exact opposite you should do.
I don’t feel that this is what we’ve seen from T100. Nor do I feel that having a 20 metre draft zone instead of just 12 metres made T100 more interesting to watch. If you want riders to leave more than the minimum distance, so that slotting in after passing becomes easier, then the solution isn’t a longer draft zone. The solution would be hiding the RaceRanger data from the athletes and only making it available to the technical officials.
The point of going to 20 m Vs 12 would be to break these groups up so they don’t exist or else are smaller as the 5 th guy at 12 would be 60 m back Va the 3 rd guy at 20 60 m back and therefore guys would split easier or get kicked off the back.
Also everyone is thinking this is about the weak swimmers want this change but …
Here are the people that benefit the most from 20 m at Ironman distance
LCB , Knibb, lovseth , laidlow , MVR , riddle,
People stuck solo after a good swim with no help vs the group behind .
90% of pro supposedly want the change that’s front swimmer mid pack and weak why.
Everyone always thinks everyone else must be getting an advantage on them on the bike . Hence why they ran better or had a good bike on less power etc.
48 40
But agree the ‘or’: “the point of going to 20 m vs 12 would be to break these groups up so they . .. are smaller.” And this would mean that the stronger riders in those groups earn a deserved dividend from their strength which they often don’t.
Edit: I give you one World Champion who would’ve been far less likely to win: Sodaro. In 2022 could Neumann have held on at 20m back in 2022?
I want the best athletes to win (a good race to watch is a bonus and not the raison d’etre of choosing a draft zone length). The extrapolation of the ‘entertainment’ argument for sticking to 12m is to say: let’s drop the draft zone to 8m. Given riders are on the bars, any less than that reduces safety, though thousands of amateurs seem to manage/cope with being closer than 8m.
How do you define “best athlete?” Because, in my mind, specifically using the ruleset to your advantage (e.g., the classic speed up as someone tries to overtake, making the other rider earn a penalty for spending too much time in the zone or not completing the pass) is part of the tactical gamesmanship that makes racing fun.
Collectively, as a sport, we need to be putting out the most exciting product for a broader consumer audience.
You’re the numbers guy, do the numbers (please). How many minutes slower would she have been? Consider she comfortably and smartly ran fast enough to beat Lucy by eight minutes. Chelsea was walking aid stations, not looking under any kind of stress.
We can’t say, maybe Lucy would have ran faster if it was a “race” because we can also say maybe Chelsea would have biked and ran faster if the draft rules were different.
Don’t get me wrong, she definitely sat in during that race and I’ve wondered the same thing. But she was clearly on fire that day.
What are the pros here for, if not our entertainment and/or promotion of the sport?
Their job (as a group being paid by the race) is to entertain us, represent the sport / the race that’s paying them, and as a 2nd order effect, to represent their sponsors.
If 8m yields a better entertainment product, then we should consider that - I don’t think we will since there’s effects downstream in the amateur ranks and will lead to a run battle, but if that’s a rule change that makes the sport more compelling, let’s consider it, sure.
Heh, when I also read the 8m devils advocate suggestion, I thought .. That sounds like a good idea to me.
As he pointed out, too often the AG ranks are at 8m or less.
From a mass participation perspective, I think the heyday of triathlon is behind us. There may have been a time when the industry was served by having all this dedicated triathlon bike gear, but is it still? Would a mostly draft legal race be a better option for participation? I could see an argument for safety set to 3m on a road bike. I’ve been passed by one of these trains already in 70.3 Worlds Lahti… looked fun, but I declined to join in.
I think you’d have trouble converting most of triathlon to draft-legal.
As you alluded to, amateur ranks are about safety and fairness - I want to know that the guy next to me had a similar effort and beat me fair and square. And so the drafting piece is an enforcement problem.
As much as it will be a while before Race ranger gets down in cost so that IM can field 2500 (or at least everyone who isn’t open cat), that’s probably the longer-term solution. Something on the order of timing chip cost that keeps everyone honest, and then automatically gives out penalties.
Great swimmer , solid biker , great runner as an Ironman world champ
At 20 m
Solid swimmer , great biker , great runner as an Ironman champ
At legal draft we get great swimmer, ok biker,
Great runner.
At 50 m we get bored.
You still would have to be a good swimmer and great runner to win. Just the bike gives a bit of wiggle room for the 1 min back guy . If kona and nice this year were 20 m I think the same order happens for most the top 10 guys and gals.
I’m totally wrong (confusing Haug chasing down LCB in '23) with Sodaro’s dominant run in '22 - Haug way slower in '22 than in '19 or her 2:48 in '23.
I will go and score that assertion through.
I suggest that Ryf, Haug and LCB are examples (all 12m) which are at variance with that:
LCB: Great swimmer, great biker, solid runner
Ryf: Solid swimmer, great biker, solid runner
Haug: Solid swimmer, solid biker, great runner
All judgements relative (and current as opposed to otd).
Would Haug have still caught LCB ('19) at 20m (probably).
I am not suggesting that 20m would make (or have made) a difference to the podium results; just that the route to get there is fairer and seen to be so as wheel suckers get less advantage and the strong rider who can break away or the weak rider who can’t hang on and splits the group or is dropped respectively benefit/suffer. Also fairer for the great swimmers who bike hard early as those chasing (in the train not leading) have less advantage and have to work harder.
