Love the concept of the additional 1-km run at 30-km. Very outside the box on that one.
http://www.slowtwitch.com/News/New_anti-drafting_initiatives_4808.html
I like that a lot. That’s a serious penalty, because running a km will add an additional 4~5 minutes making it a 9~10 minute penalty in terms of pure time lost, plus the added cost of waisted energy, plus the mental cost of the first wait and then second run penalty.
Should be done right near the end of run course so people watching near the finish can see the cheaters do a lap of shame.
Sorry, this is just a joke. Some folks just need to get a life. I wonder how this will impact them on their death bed.
This is a hobby, 99% of us are not putting food on the table with this. Man one of the reason I cannot stand to do long
distance racing. So many are just too OCD and get too carried away.
Any race that would do this will not be getting my money out of principal.
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Sorry, this is just a joke. Some folks just need to get a life. I wonder how this will impact them on their death bed.
This is a hobby, 99% of us are not putting food on the table with this. Man one of the reason I cannot stand to do long
distance racing. So many are just too OCD and get too carried away.
Any race that would do this will not be getting my money out of principal.
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Why? If you don’t draft, this will not impact you! I for one just want to have a fair race. Any race that will not make an effort to be fair will not be getting my money out of principal. 
Sorry, this is just a joke. Some folks just need to get a life. I wonder how this will impact them on their death bed.
This is a hobby, 99% of us are not putting food on the table with this. Man one of the reason I cannot stand to do long
distance racing. So many are just too OCD and get too carried away.
Any race that would do this will not be getting my money out of principal.
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you go on frequent tirades about course cutters, take every oportunity to mention you race on “team usa” every year but dismiss drafting reinforcement as being supported by ocd losers taking their hobby too seriously while you wear your moats mirror at races to see course officials coming up behind you… your complaint rings hollow.
Love the concept of the additional 1-km run at 30-km. Very outside the box on that one.
I like the idea of tougher measures against drafting, i hate seeing so many packs during each race but i do think an extra 1km run is harsh. This is meant to be a 140.6 race, no more no less?
6-8 min penalties should be good enough, third time you are out
Some drafting calls are “questionable” meaning it can be unintentional, alot of us are guilty of it, like we don;t overtake fast enough etc
I wouldn;t want to be running an extra 1km but if I am guilty, i would sit out the time penalty
Seems like they are copying the system Biathlon uses for missing a target.
Any measure to stop drafting is a good idea imo.
The only people who get mad about increased drafting penalties are the ones who draft.
The issue I see is this is not repeatable on different courses. Works for Roth because there is a turnaround along a road at 30km so they can just extend it another 500m for violators. Course configurations can negate the ability to have this penalty.
Just up the penalty to 8 or 10 minutes. Take them out of the race with the penalty.
1k extra for h20
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Still suggesting the idea to make more races draft legal so we can draft off dopers and other cheaters reducing the benefit of their cheating and avoid penalties ourselves if RDs choose to have more riders than road. However, it could be humbling if I couldn’t hold a doper’s wheel in my age group.
A little more seriously, but not entirely, why is drafting so out of the question? IMO the skill it takes to swim in a triathlon is similar to the time and effort it takes to learn how to draft. Drafting gets a bad name because many do not practice it and don’t know what a safe distance is for following. And yes, if one is on the tri bars, one needs more distance behind the rider than a person with their fingers on the brakes; yet this can be learned. A person can also learn not to cross over the wheel they are sitting on. A rider can even learn how to be dropped when they are tired rather than crash the person in front of them or around them. As a rider you also have the option of dropping another rider who is wobbling around you or letting them lead. The penalty for crashing the person in front of you is the same as while driving your car, it would be your fault for not maintaining a safe distance and you would need to carry insurance to replace the person’s bike, etc. 
There are triathletes who train together on the tri bars while training and there is no carnage. Driving a car is as scary as hell too; yet we do it. We also train on roads where cars pass us which gives us less control over a situation than a race course.
We know that crashing on your bike is bad and hopefully that knowledge will prevent many crashes. If drafting made races smaller, that might not be so bad if the field is thinned. Large races make it hard not to draft. Crashes may also add to the toughness of the event. Fans like to see and hear of crashes just like they like to see someone crawling to the finish line from about a mile out or passing out ten yards short of the finish.
Maybe not all races need to be draft legal. Draft legal races might actually help reduce drafting in those races where drafting is not allowed by giving people who want to draft that race option. In draft legal races we could then sit on some cheater’s wheel allowing us to benefit from their doping or mirrors or whatever.
Even with drafting, I think the swim would still keep most people from entering a triathlon as an important barrier to entry.
Good luck to us all this year. Hopefully very few of us crash while training this year or while driving a car.
The extra loop for cheaters, litterers etc is quite common in some European races and is very effective. A little extra loop near the end of the run course is feasible in almost any venue.
As for the comments on making rules draft legal: this can’t be done if people ride TT-bikes since that is crazily dangerous. Maybe a next step in that scenario could be to allow people to punch each other in the face during the run… I don’t think many people would fancy that either…
Either a race is draft legal and people ride road racing bikes or it is a non-drafting event and people ride TT-bikes. But if it is not, the rules should be enforced in an effective way.
Protour riders can handle bikes very well but aren’t allowed to race TT-bikes either. And if they do - in a team-TT - they crash quite often.
Sam
samgyde.com
Let these folks get a “drafting” call and then see what they say. These calls in most of the cases are way too subjective. They are made by many folks who really have no idea what
they are doing. (And I did not say all, and I did not say some are real, but …)
So if you want your race ruined for something you did not do, go for it.
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If they really cared about cheaters, then they would do drug testing on all the podium winners. These are the folks really cheating.
If they want to give me a drafting call going up Brockway at 5 mph without 3 bikes lengths, go for it.
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So people who are drafting “aren’t really cheating”. Drug enforcement cost extra money, increased time penalties don’t. Also you’re complaining that most people are doing this for fun, yet drug testing brings up a lot more problems if someone has a false positive vs, someone who wasn’t drafting getting a drafting penalty.
You either care about stoping all cheating or you don’t care about cheating. You obviously don’t care that people are cheating and drafting at courses.
If you think drafting can’t be policed, you should be calling for draft legal events, rather than less harsh penalties.
Let these folks get a “drafting” call and then see what they say. These calls in most of the cases are way too subjective. They are made by many folks who really have no idea what
they are doing. (And I did not say all, and I did not say some are real, but …)
So if you want your race ruined for something you did not do, go for it.
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If they really cared about cheaters, then they would do drug testing on all the podium winners. These are the folks really cheating.
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How often do people have to point out that the only dopers you will catch at races are the stupid ones? Why don’t you get it that OOC testing is the only way to catch most cheaters (like Moats)? Or do you accept drug testers showing up at your workplace unannounced, even though it “is just a hobby”?
If they really cared about cheaters, then they would do drug testing on all the podium winners. These are the folks really cheating.
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Sometimes they do get tested and I haven’t heard of lots of positives. The fast guys I know are gifted with good genes and train hard and smart and I am sure they won’t mind being tested on every podium or ooc. There is nothing at stake for age groupers so why bother risking health and wasting money?
Eliminate the people that do get caught though - preferably forever.
Drafting is another issue as it is so visible and is very annoying for people that do chose to follow the rules. I hate it when I drag a pack of cheaters behind me and have to waste energy to get rid of them. This is - opposed to doping - so clear during a race and easy to penalize. This picture is me leading/passing a pack in Kona. Still hard to judge based on a still image but it is pretty clear that there is some voluntary drafting involved here and it frustrates me much more than convicted epo user Antonio Colom in that same race - fortunately stopped by a flat tire maybe after being negligent with his needle.
Sam
samgyde.com
To be clear, on principal, you are opposed to stiffer penalties to people who do not follow the rules.
I think the reason this makes so much sense is that drafting, during a LC race especially, along with a 4-minute penalty benefits the athlete the most in the latter stages of the event. I doubt very highly that athlete would be willing to accept an extra km at the 30-km mark of the run and think twice about their positioning with respect to drafting during the bike.