However you want to say it, the reality is telling the world you want to be able to take an otherwise banned substance in private to help with your contract negotiations is not of greater importance than transparency in drug testing/regulations on athletes.
The lens being referenced is the obvious fact that some keep jumping over all over this concept of maternity leave and pregnant athletes. The rationale given was essentially compensation. If you want to ensure protection and compensation for pregnant female athletes, come out and make that argument for all women, not just the ones seeking TUEs.
Argue for legislation that all pro athletes, sponsors and federations need to belong to a dues paying union so that women or men who have children can seek maternity leave without worrying about losing compensation.
It seems the 20 m rule helps the runners !!!
As they can just hold a wattage steady maybe and run stronger Vs the surging 12 m bike paces.
It would be nice if we could see some data of past races surges up front vs now . I would imagine the average watts would be closer to the same or slightly more but the variance is better and the legs are not cooked from a lot of punches on climbs and passes.
Kb it the ultimate winner , what do I need to do to win ??? 12 m must be with the group . Now must be the best runner within a small gap off the bike.
Can change the strategy based off the rules and is confident.
If Ironman wants to limit the number of BoP pros (in the absence of federation rule changes), the solution is simple: create a filter.
And since they have the pro series as well as non-pro series races, it would seem to me that the easiest course of action is to use those other races as a way to filter for the pro series. Give those races half as many points as the pro series (but probably with a slower point decay) and then use the combined points from the past 12 months to determine who gets into Oceanside and the other races with too many pros (however many you want).
Exceptions can be made for anyone who’s podiumed at a WC in the last 5 years or maybe just go with your usual wildcard rules. (So Wilde or Waugh can get in)
If you really want to get fancy, you could throw in a penalty (not to the pro series but to the filter) that docks you for DNS within so many days
I hate this talk about the back pros like they had there best day and still suck. They don’t have the platform to whine about the issues and some just jog it in after bike issues or an injury and we actually don’t know what happened , but it’s ok for Paula to drop, Ari to Drop and Other pros are allowed there bad day.
it’s just easy low hanging fruit to whine about.
Two guys I know did there first pro race they both won world age groups in 2025, one flatted and just made sure to finish , one was great but still outside the top 20 and will get better and a weaker race would have been top 10. lets only talk about the wins with expectations to do well.
Do we need better guidelines maybe but it’ s not like they had there best day with a 4:33 race, one was sub 4 last year on that course one would have won the age group race by over 10 minutes.
So what do you want them to do win easy vs age groupers ( get bored and quit) or push to get better??
IM is basically going to have to do the heavy lifting on this issue *if it ever desired to fix it. Every federation has its own standard of what qualifies as an elite/pro so it’ll fall on IM to fix this. Again if they wanted too, but it may not be worth it in their viewpoint.
Yes obviously we want them to get better - and at the end of the day these guys are much faster than I am.
But if “too many pros at the pro race” is a problem, then the only thing you can do is start limiting the field somehow. In specific cases, yeah you can say that so and so had a flat or a bad day, but the sheer number should tell you that on the whole the bar is too low.
Notably, the impact falls on the women’s race - at 20m the issue is lessened but it’s not gone. And there were a lot of pro men coming out of the water with the first waves of pro women. Obviously not saying that if you get outswum by 5 mins by Vittoria Lopes you should hand in your pro card, but the mere presence of so many MPros doing so means something needs fixing.
That’s fair but I saw a “pro” I’ve known for years, who is 40+ and is DFL at every race he enters. He only races pro because he wants the free entries. Period. And he’s one of many I know who aren’t ever going to be a competitive pro, are too slow, too old, but still course clutter these races.
Yes, getting caught in or before T1 doesn’t matter for Pros worth their card because they will just fly past on the bike.
Except if the MPro is weak in the water AND low power on the bike. They had a 5 minutes start, Six women swam sub 25. Sanchez and Merle thus left T1 about the same time as some of those listed below and rode similar speeds.
Let’s hope they have a better race next time.
As long as he’s racing as a pro and not sniping amateur awards, I’m good with it. Dede showed that pros should race until the wheels come off. Rather than quit at 35 and take Kona slots in the amateur field.
Coombs beat Paula Finley last year and started in the age group wave. He had a blow out in the bike . One week it’s never quit !!! Next week it’s get out of the way if it’s a tough day.
See when we use just numbers without context it looks bad.
We don’t use Jan’s bike split from the year he flatted to say he should quit . Etc .
I think the issue though is that if it’s one or two of these guys here and there, it’s probably not a big deal. It’s a bad day or whatever.
The problem comes when the lead female is now ensconced in a group of these guys and it’s affecting her race. And this could be in both good and bad ways. Bad if she can’t race to her typical pace (getting passed / needing to pass) or good if her pace matches a few of the guys and she can slot in.
Either way it’s bad for women’s racing since it distorts the relative efforts being made vs a more pristine women’s race (not that it’s happening). Suddenly there’s extra bonus for fast swimmers since they can slot in or less emphasis on the swim since it doesn’t matter. Same way as the lead moto used to grant bonus watts to the men’s race - it’s there but you won’t want it to be there.
Whether the guy who could be making podium in the AG or in the pro field isn’t a big deal except that it does impact the women’s race. And to a lesser extent, it means that better pros can’t get into the races they want (though this is less an issue since there haven’t been many complaining)
Been a min since I’be posted but I wanted to let you all know that I have officially DOWNGRADED and accepted my age-group card. It seems like almost no one does this and just holds on forever like your 40yo DFL friend, but here we are! Now Mark can’t make fun of me for coming out of the water after all of the pro women. Take that!!!
Increase the head start given to MPROs to 10 minutes.
If an MPRO is passed by a woman before T2, he’s disqualified.
Knibb swam 23’ (on what may have been a short course) and biked 2:15. If you can’t swim 28’ on that course and on that day and bike 2:20, subject to “internal adjustments”, and as a result you can’t keep any of a 10’ head start in under 3 hours of racing, there’s no point in being a pro other than the ability to race frequently at a lower cost.
(Also you’re probably going to have a quicker transition 1 than Taylor )
Well tbf they haven’t got ‘Opinion’ ‘Data’ ‘Interviews’ ‘Previews’ ‘guides’ either, on there.
If they build it, you will come, I guess.
Good to see you’ve visited the building site with the foundations laid, the services in from the street and the show house up and displaying images of what the whole development will look like.
And they’ve even put out a chair for you to rest your short little legs.
@Kyleglass91 have you changed something in the editing or audio settings of the pod in the past 2-3 episodes? It’s like there is a very strong filter to block quiet noises and the effect is that there is incredibly weird long silences and gaps, and people stopped at three quarters of their sentence. Your audio still sounds quite normal, but Mark and Talbot were literally blocked mid sentence often times.
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