Kona Qualification Parity

Triathlon Forum
1

I’ve just been looking at my Road to Kona mag, and looking at the relative numbers for various geographic areas for Kona qualification. My numbers may not be absolutely exact (so please don’t split hairs), and not counting qualification at Kona iteslf for the next year, but it looks something like this:

North America - 809 slots

Rest of the World - 827 slots including: Asia - 130, Oceania - 170, Europe - 325, South America - 72, Africa - 80.

The overall number includes the Lottery allocations of 150 slots for North America, and 50 for the rest of the World.

My point: well is this fair? If you look at the various requirements in terms of times and opportunities etc. it is obviously easier to make Kona from North America. As such Kona should not be called the Ironman World Championship as it doesn’t allow for parity in representation or opportunity to compete. In other words, it’s rigged to allow more particpants from North America.

2

good point, but, its all about $$…the other rplaces you listed dont sell out Ironmans, so there arent more of them in other countries hence slots…we yanks sell out an Ironman in hours, thats big bucks.

3

well yes and no. In Oz, you actually have qualify to get to the IM form which you qualify for Kona. Some Euro races sell out as well, but I do agree with your point, that it is all about the $$$. Which is sad I guess, as a World Champs should be about the best vs the best. In my case, I have raced Kona twice and haven’t had trouble qualifying, but one of my buddies has never qualifies despite going under 9:50 as an Age Grouper year in year out. I’m sure that in most North American races taht would get him there, although I accept that time comparisons can be redundant as all races are different in terms of difficulty.

4

Yeah, a sub 10 is a gurantee anywhere but Florida…have your friend come stateside and race, I will gladly put him up for as long as he wants in exchange for Oz accomadations!

5

Re-do your math and divide each total by the total number of race participants in each region. That might even things out a bit.

6

does this mean, therefore, that if you looked at Kona results that North American residents would make up an even propartion in the first half of the field? By this I mean, even though the North American athletes have access to roughly half the slots, do they make up half the results in the first half of the field? Even more pointedly, do they deserve, on merit, the number of slots they get?

7

Being Aussie myself, I thought about this for a long time. I badly wanted to qualify for Kona on my first 3 attempts at IM, but couldnt due to the quality of the field here in Oz. In Nth US, times I did were seemingly faster than equal aged counterparts in the US at the IM’s there (given different conditions and courses, but surely wouldnt be majorly different).

But I think your just banging your head against a brick wall in this aged old debate about Nth US races. They sell out in hours, make bigger bucks, therefore the spots go to their races. Simple, yet cruel to IM racers all around the world.

pinkboy…

8

Look at it this way- at least this is a sport where participants are invited from other coutries before crowning a World Champion! Unlike Football, Baseball, etc… Yes there is disparity in representation- but at the end of the day $$$$$$

Weeman

9

D.W.Weston correctly points out that 49% of the allocated slots go to North America, and suggests that this shouldn’t really be the World Championships. I feel it’s a given that it’s not a bona-fide World Champs’, since one can buy one’s way in, win in a lottery, or even pose for Triathlete magazine, and it’s only a “self-declared” World Championship.

In Kona 2003 there were 1569 finishers. Looking at the results on www.ironmanlive.com …

** In the first half there were 271 Americans, and 135 Germans**

** In the second half there were 488 Americans, and 48 Germans**

Clearly the lottery’s favouritism of Americans is responsible for part of this, as may be the apparent greater proportion of more senior athletes from North America to partake of this nonsense than from other (typically less affluent, I think) countries. However, this still leaves the suggestion that it must be easier to qualify in North America. This is tough to quantify. Some foreign races do not fill up, and certainly never in the times of North American races, but if you’re capable of qualifying for Kona, you’re typically capable of picking up a qualification spot for any of the North America races, so I doubt there are droves of qualification-capable North Americans sat at home lamenting the fact that they didn’t get an entry in on time, such that the quality of North American Kona-starters goes down.

I would suggest that it IS easier to qualify in North America, and that the reason demand is so much higher than the rest of the world, but the quality of the entrants apparently slightly lower, is due to the large numbers of “have-a-go” participants in North America, finishing way after dusk, which foreign results suggest don’t appear to the same extent elsewhere. The recent boom in our sport is greatly down to them, not the elites, and in turn they are responsible for the larger number of qualifying races on their continent. They are also the reason why I can find 10 local retailers willing to sell me a disk wheel or a pair of aero-bars. If we’re not one of them, we should be grateful to them.

Doug (153rd in Kona 2003, if it matters)

10

If you cant beat them, come join them. Why not just come here and race an IMNA?

11

I think you hit the nail square on the head. Many non-US IM racers are just that: competitive racers. The idea of doing an Ironman for fun is not as popular overseas as it is in the US.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if you were going to try to achieve parity and ration out slots evenly across all the Ironman races world-wide, two things would happen: First, the qualifying times at qaulifying races would even out across the board, and second(this is my may point), you’d see the attendance at Kona decrease a lot. I believe this because I think the harsh reality of Kona is that it is expensive, and even more so for people from further away than the mainland US or Japan.

For proof, I offer this: Take a look at the roll-down at a major US Ironman. The number of people who qualify for Kona but pass on the slot for a variety of reasons ranging from “already qualified” to “don’t have $6,000+ cash to throw away” is pretty big.

This is what I’m thinking, and it’s entirely possible that I’m way off base.

12

How about running similar numbers for women?

I’d argue that the Women’s races are MORE competitive in North America than overseas (Heck, IM France had to beg Solomon-Watson to race last year and another woman–Jennifer Potts–signed up 2 weeks before the race enroute to a 3rd place).

I know plenty of North American women who have chosen to go overseas (particularly to Korea, Malaysia, and Japan) to qualify simply because it was easier for them to garner slots than it was to race in the U.S.

I’d attribute this to a generally more-embracing attitude in North America toward women’s competitiveness (as a positive trait).

As for men, I’d also argue that you get a quality shift from Europe because the military’s support of athletes. At Kona last year, the Germans had an entire Army Team that were supported in their build-up for Ironman. The U.S. Military won’t even give you a uniform and per diem for Ironman (they strictly focus on Oly racing).

As for the fair vs. unfair…It’s just a generally silly argument. If things are so competitive in Europe, why have Peter Reid and Tim Deboom owned the overall title for the past 5 years? If the Germans are so competitive, why have they only taken the overall title once? Same question for Australia? Heck, Belgium has two titles…

I’ll be testing “how hard is it to qualify theory” at IM South Africa next spring…

13

Something else that I didn’t see mentioned. A lot of non-NA racers come to NA events and qualify. So while the races may be in NA that doesn’t imply that only NA people are qualifying at those races.

14

Puskas-

No doubt other militaries are more focused on athletic participation than the U.S. services, but each U.S. service does receive four slots for Hawaii. And speaking for the Coast Guard, athletes chosen for those four slots (hopefully one of them will be me!) do get a uniform, per diem, airfare, and other costs paid for by the Coast Guard. If you’re in the service and interested in one of their slots, check it out.

Todd

15

Weeman,

I hear you. As a soccer fan(atic), I cringe when I see the World Champions of baseball, football, basketball, when it merely is the League Championship!

We Americans tend to take ourselves a little too seriously. Oh, and the Super Bowl is the most watched event in the world!

16

I have. US Navy (both when I was Active Duty and now as a Reservist) gets slots, but any support simply comes from the Command. We do NOT have a program for in-house training for Ironman (of financial support) as Armed Forces Athletics (on the Navy side) ONLY supports events which are Olympic Sports…

Good luck with the USCG slot.

17

Quick question. It seems there are two sets of numbers here, regional “slots”, and finishing times by country. How did you come up with the numbers for regional slots? Are those entries allocated to races in the listed region, or the number of IMH entrants from that region? I think that the whole system should be blind to regions. All qualifying races should be given some base number of qualifying slots, and maybe some additional slots depending on the size of the field. I think the lottery ought to be a a true lottery (maybe a separate lottery for men and women, but I’m not necessarily sold on the idea) where country of origin isn’t considered. Whether through outright qualifying, lottery, or rolldown, I think you’d still find that the majority of racers ended up being American simply because of the level of interest here.

18

In my 40-44 age group it seems that a lot of races, (some -not all) that are not in NA, are easier to get a slot to Hawaii. Exceptions would be Germany and Australia. This is just my take on it. No serious research on my part…am I off base?

19

I see your point. I think we all agree that $$$ plays an important role.

According to your number, North America 809 vs. rest of world 827, it might seem unfair. With no doubt does Ironman Tritahlon have different criterias for the World Championship Qualification. But you also have to take some of the history into account. Ironman Triathlon’s philosophy is not to get the fastest 1500 people to Kona. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need the Age groups.

I don’t think it is unfair since the 809 North American slots aren’t reserved for North American. Neither are the 827 foreign slots reserved for the athletes of those countries. Of course it is easier (and maybe cheaper, maybe??) for Americans to travel to their “local” races, yet everybody has the chance to compete all over the world. I know money can become an issue. It’s certainly not a cheap sport.

While I think lottery slots are good to some extend, I suggest that they reduce the number of the non-qualification spots. How many athletes start in Kona? Let’s say 1700. 150 lottery spots and let’s say 20 charity spots. That makes roughly 10% of all athletes non qualifiers.