Kona world champs are going no faster today than 20 years ago!

Triathlon Forum
1

Below is a comment from an e-mail a mate just sent me. Like myself he is an avid fan of triathlon/ironman.

[Have also started looking at tri equipment and how far it has actually come.
I have compared 2 races: IM Hawaii 1989 and 2007. In 1989 Mark Allen and Dave Scott rode road bikes with
road wheels and tribars in 4hr38, and ran 2h40. In 2007, Macca rode 4H38 on a highly developed tribike with all
the gizmos, and ran a 2H42. All 3 had similar raceday conditions, all 3 are spectacular athletes, so the real question is
does all this technology work? or is it just a way of extracting your hard earned cash, just to look good on race day.]

Just copied his comment to save time, as I am well aware of the above also. So endorse it 100%.

Like everyone else I like new gear, but reckon everyone should be wary of slick marketing.

The cost of some of the gear today is astronomical, however if you are sensible there are some great bargains out there. Leave the $10,000 bike set ups for the sponsored pros and extremely wealthy is what I am proposing. If you can average 40km an hour(for an hour or more) on a bike set up for only few hundred bucks then consider spending more.

The powers of some of the marketing that has been around recently is excessive and it is easy to fall into their traps.

I put it to slowtwitch that a fuly kitted bike 20 years ago would only average about 1km/hr slower than a fully kitted bike today!. And no the bikes today don’t save leg energy for the run(negligible anyway).

So then you say the athletes were better 20 years ago? Maybe but not the difference the bike marketers(salespeople) of today are proposing.

http//http//www.triathlonshots.com"]www.triathlonshots.com

Otherwise go and spent $5000- $10,000 on a bike set up and wonder why you are a slave to your work.

Next they will be building energy systems into bikes and flogging them off to the dreamers of the world. The concepts are probably endless.

2

They had less drug testing 20 years ago too. Not accusing anyone directly… just saying.

3

i don’t disagree, for sure. however. . . the course has changed over the years, so the comparisons aren’t 100%. second, hawaii’s more a race than a time trial, so times are less important than placings, i think. i’ll also say that hawaii was notorious in the early days for using giant moving vans for the TV cameras instead of the current motorbike/helicopter setup, so - not naming names - there are some pretty sweet photos out there of racers riding the monstrous draft behind those guys.

lastly: mark, dave and the rest were amazing, amazing athletes. the germans started coming in a pushing the bike, and lots of guys were pressing hard instead of being tactical. it’s the bikes, sure, but it’s also the riders.

there’s lots of talent at kona today, too, but also a whole ton of it that’s stayed in the ITU, or that races 70.3, or other IM events besides kona.

-mike

4

They had less drug testing 20 years ago too. Not accusing anyone directly… just saying. \

Uh, no they didn’t… In the late 80’s I was getting tested at least 3 or 4 times a year, and one year twice out of competition. No different than today. You can argue how effective the tests are against catching cheaters, but I would say that has not changed either, in fact todays athletes probably have a leg up on that one. Not too many athletes had their own personal drug doctors in the old days. And you can argue that the drugs are better know for performance enhancing, and that would be valid. No EPO in the late 80’s, and not too many different steroids. Most of the drugs of the 80’ were stimulants, or real blood doping( using your own whole blood) from what I can recall hearing. SO if you want to make the arguement that the athletes of that day did their times because they were doped, like you seem to imply, then I think you have it exactly backwards…just saying…

5

The problem with this debate is that it assumes that there should have been more evolution in the past 20 years with all the technological advances and “superior” training protcols. Same thing is happening over in Running (ok a little less technologically driven there), times just are not getting materially faster than the 80’s. Why? I think rather than put the blame on the tired excuse that IM athletes are not training as hard or racing as many short course events is bogus. The answer is simple; we saw the sport reach the near peak of human performance relatively soon. The pioneers (say the Big 4), were highly talented and driven atheltes who got to the limits of human performance right away. Now, we’ve seen a gradual waxing and waning of performance over the ensuing 20 years with a slight overall improvement in the depth of the field (very slight). My guess is that regardless of the next technological breakthrough we are going to drift around the 8:10-8:20 mark for Kona wins for many many years to come. If you were to drop a Pauli Kiuru, a Jeff Devlin, a Christian Bustos, a Wolfagang Dietrich in to the field today (time traveling their age and fitness back 20 years), they’d probably place about where they did then, ie., top 10.

6

Maybe the race is more tactical now. Guys are riding “with the pack” so to speak, maintaining a pace during the bike, rather than just all-out trying to crush the bike course. Basically racing just fast enough to beat the others rather than going for a record time. Just a theory.

7

It’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison. Define “similar” race-day conditions. 2-3mph of wind, for example, might feel similar, but would make a big difference.

However, on the topics of bikes, I think that a lot of the pro’s from back in the day knew more about their positions than many of the pros of today. They had to, because aerobars were a new invention. I think more pros knew back then that steep geometry worked, something that pros now either choose not to believe or never even considered.

And of course, there is the issue of vehicles, etc. But I think that positioning, and the geometry of bikes which impacts positioning, has certainly played a role.

Beyond that, I think that a huge amount of talent is now in the ITU. Many of those guys just have a lot more raw talent. Look at Hamish Carter. Had he showed up in Kona instead of Maui, I think the result might have been similar. Look at the success Crowie had in his first go at Kona. There is no substitute for talent.

There is also a lot of tactics. Back in the day, winning the race was just as hard, but nowadays, placing in the top-10 is a lot tighter than it used to be. So tactics certainly play a role.

I also think you have a lot of athletes that train incorrectly. Like with bike positioning, when Ironman was “new,” you had a lot of guys pushing the envelope on how to train. I don’t think you have that as much anymore.

8

I think technology aides the age group athlete much more than the pro, helping people overcome poor genetics and the dual life of professional/triathlete. In short, it helps you go farther for less. At the pinnacle of the sport the athletes were just as good 20 years ago as today. I’m not sure anyone invented technology that helps people legally run faster marys. Anyway, I think if long distance triathlon were able to provide people with fame and fortune than more, and potentially better, athletes would be attracted to the sport and the bars might fall. Today they race for the win and do nothing to jeopardize that, for the cost of an unnecessary blow up as a percentage of annual earnings is quite high.

9

You cannot compare the Ironwar to any other year.

Neither Scott nor Allen would have gone as fast as they did without the other guy being right there pushing them.

10

I can only come up with one solution: Dave and Mark were secretly using PowerCranks.

11

Well, whatever. No way to prove either way is there?

For Kona specific times, the course has changed, and it’s harder than it was back then. No more simple than that.

12

I’m not sure Norman would have done that fast if Macca was not there to chase him, but that said he went just as fast as he had to win, Scott or Allen were going as fast as possible and hoping the other could not hang. However, that’s getting us off track.

13

Well, whatever. No way to prove either way is there?

For Kona specific times, the course has changed, and it’s harder than it was back then. No more simple than that. \

You are completely clueless. Yes I can prove that the drugs of today are better than 20 years ago, only an idiot would argue against that…And the course has changed, but what makes you think it is harder now than then?? I did most all of them, and have seen all the latest changes, so I have an idea which course was tougher, but you tell me how simple it is that the course now is tougher than 20+ years ago??? You have some proof, do you even know what the old courses were, or is it just because you say so???

14

They had less drug testing 20 years ago too. Not accusing anyone directly… just saying.

has to be this for sure.

15

Not too sure about that, I’ve been to the past several Ironman Kona races and I remember very vividly the ‘pit’ and a little hill up to an intersection in Keauhou that would do everything short of make guys and gals walk their bikes up the thing. Not one to debate which course is harder or easier as I am a firm believer that as soon as an althlete puts his toes on the line for a race that they have accepted all things,and consequences that come along with that race on that day. Maybe one of the vets of Kona can chime in about the pit and that little hill.

16

times just are not getting materially faster than the 80’s

Are you sure? The marathon time has dropped close to 5 minutes in that time frame!

I agree with the OP, not meaning to be critical of the great athletes of today or yesterday, but it’s a head scratcher to me that both the absolute top times and say that top 100 finishers at a race like IMH are going no faster than they were 20 years ago. Clearly there have been some significant equipment advances regarding the bike. We sure know a heck of a lot more about triathlon training now than we did in the late 80’s. One would think that eventhough absolute bike times are not faster, their must be significant watt and thus energy savings to ride a 5:00 flat IM today than 20 years ago. If that’s the case then why are run times not better. Actually, if you really look into the results you will see that the run times today both right at the top and through the upper 25% of the field of the big and competitive IM races are slower!

I have my ideas, as to whay this is the case, but I am bound to get into trouble if I was really honest.

17

EPO and blood transfusions were available and in use in the 90s and testing to detect them was not until 2000 or later. I’d like to think that everyone was clean, but the fastest times are from the 90s and it is well known what cycling was doing with this in the 90s. (Bjarne Riis, Rolf Aldag, Erik Zabel and Brian Holm) (also 1988 US cycling team using blood transfusions) So makes you wonder.

18

If you look at the differences in equipment since then, in terms of things that can be demonstrated to make a real difference you have:

  • better aero wheels
  • better frames (most guys rode round tubes back then)
  • better aero helmets (the giro aero was available but few used it)

All in all, I’d say that the wheels will be the only item above that really makes a major difference, and even that is probably not enough to select the winner of the race. Frames make a small difference, and the helmets are unproven and just getting popular in the last couple years as they tend to cause heat issues.

If you consider that bike position, nutrition, pacing tools (HRM), and the caliber of athletes are all similar, it’s no surprise that the times are similar also. These are the things that will make the most difference. And really it is only on the bike there has been any change at all, so the total event time will be even more similar. I don’t think it proves that the 89 athletes were any better, it just says that the equipment available is a second order affect.

19

I think the athletes 20 years ago where stronger and pushed harder. Perhaps if you could turn back time and put them on the current bikes, then they would have went faster? Impossible to know for sure, but I really need to see more data. I’d like to see the bike splits for each year that the bike course was exactly the same, and see wind conditions, humidity, heat.

You could also say nutrition is bogus according to the original argument. Surely nutrition is better today.

20

Give Macca or Normann or Feris et all a Mark Allen in his prime, undefeated all year at every distance marking them the entire race patiently waiting for the right moment to go for broke and I’m sure they’ll set some records in the process (or blow up).