What’s up with splitting the women & men pro fields across IMCDA and IMUSA?
Why did they really do this? Save money? Were the races becoming too watered down? Is this good for the pros?
It’ll make for much less interesting online “spectating” on Sunday. You could usually count on one of the two races to be interesting.
Do you think IMNA tells the pros which race to do? What do you mean they ‘split’ the pro field? The pros decide which races they want to do.
I think the idea was more competitive fields within each gender within each race.
They kept the total prize purse the same (so no saving money) for each race, so the money winners in each race get 2x as much as before. The idea was to get more men to CdA and more women to LP, thereby creating overall more competitive races. Right now, some (many?) people feel that relatively slow (compared with say the 80’s) will get a podium/$$ in an IM race since there are so many of them. I think this was an effort to combat that.
I personally, think it is a good thing. The races will be more competitive and the rewards will be greater. Other alternative would be to “handicap” like at LifeTime Fitness and have mixed gender top-10 getting money, instead of top-10 men & top-10 women.
So will a male age grouper have the fastest time this year in Lake Placid? Quite possibly Tom Ziebart!
Kevin - At this time IMNA is trying to figure out how much of a lead they will have to give the Pro Women at the swim start, so that I do not finish first at LP. I’ll let you know what time split they come up with to keep me from crossing the line first.
Of course, Max could out sprint me at the line for the win. Z