The handicap concept itself is an interesting comparison for sure. I can see some benefit of that in helping people to decide which race to go to.
But… in most cases don’t the majority of people go to the race that’s convenient? So I could see how Ironman wouldn’t want to make that close race suddenly feel difficult.
But it will be smart of them to provide some data on their site on each race sign up page about average finish times per AG compared to global averages at all races.
Ironman really does do a terrible job with how they use the treasure trove of their data.
Your second table appears to use the same coeff. as the first table - the adjusted times of the same athlete are the same between the two tables. Can you check and update?
There is no thread for half Ironman qualification coefficient. There is only one for mixed gender full Ironman. You point about wanting to know more about age group winners though is valid. As we would expect the top performances in half IM at least for men age groupers should come out of 18-24 year olds getting ready to give pro racing a shot
well i believe there is not thread because its not used for halfs. ( so its about the full distance )
and thanks ryan for the outline and now i do recognize corinas name. cheers, anyway i would love you ( rhyan ) to go deeper into those athletes ( if they are clean and did not use dubious drs lol )
Agreed that the 70.3 coefficients are not that controversial, plus an athlete on the bubble who is most affected by who shows and up and now coefficients and who shows up across age group, is not in an “all or nothing” roll of the dice. An athlete (assuming they don’t have to travel far and has some financial resources), minimally has enough phyisical energy to take multiple cracks per year at qualifying whereas at the full IM distance, for most age groupers its one shot all or nothing game, so stakes are much higher all around.
I’m going to chime in an point out that if we’re worried about the impact of elevation on the race to see who was the best age groupers, that the coefficients themselves were based on hilly courses. Maybe not as hilly as Marbella, mind you.
2019 Nice (Hilly), 2021 and 2022 St. George (Hilly)
2023 Lahti (rolling) and 2024 Taupo (rolling)
So 3/5 courses which went into the calculation were hilly courses and it is reasonable to assume that the age grades we get here are fine, as applied to this course.
Now, if we want to gripe about using these as the basis for qualifying… that’s another matter. But having 2-3x as many slots means that there isn’t the same friction as at Kona.
No, but Max’s younger brother was a very promising young triathlete in his teens, just - imo - got burned out by the coach who shall not be named. He was a different type of athlete than Max mentally, even though he was maybe potentially even better physiologically and triathlon skills wise.
But doesn’t that basically mean Ironman wants a sizable portion of their customers to remain ignorant as a strategy and the surprise them on race day? I always felt pretty bad at races like St George for people who could otherwise barely make the time cutoffs, taken completely by surprise with how much slower they go on a harder course.
I wonder what percent of DNFs Ironman is happy with? What percent who DNF come back to race again.
I really think that if a slower athlete is “completely taken by surprise” by the discovery that cycling up hills is slower than cycling in flat terrain then they haven’t spent sufficient time outside in the real world of riding on, you know, real roads with ‘scenery’ before attempting a significant physical challenge. By all means feel (a bit) sorry for them, but why feel “bad” about that? Anyway, I’m super off topic.
