now that they have decided that you cant get a kona slot at a half ironman does that mean there will be more slots at the ironman races or more lottery slots?
“yes”, but there will be more IM’s to distribute them among. I’d guess the result will probably be that getting to Kona won’t be a whole lot different (harder or easier), as it always appeared to me that getting to Kona was harder in 1/2’s than fulls because they had fewer slots than IM’s and the competition at halfs (at the top) seems to be pretty stiff because most athletes can do more of those than full’s over the year.
This is not exactly true - I spoke to RD at Eagleman and at least through 2006 they will have Kona slots as will the other normal half IM qualifiers. In 2007 that may/may not change.