+1
They didn’t “waltz” in, they qualified because they are fast. “Waltzing” in is being in an AG with only three entrants and qualifying by not DNFing (in OPs proposed system).
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We can’t move this one there, as it’d break the whole article comment thing. When it’s smaller topics / conversations we can do that…but I can’t do it when that thread is over 1200 posts (and counting) already.
They qualified because the Kona coefficient for that age group is probably off and they had good races.
I am 65 and still trying.
While I have yet to make it to the big dance, I have followed the event since the 1980’s. Of time, the Knoa course has changed somewhat. My understanding is the entries are limited to about 2800 people because of the space on Kailua Pier. Looking at maps, I see just a short distance away, several large parking areas. How about just relocate transition area to one of them? It would not be as iconic as the pier. They could manage many more athletes. The distance looks much less than the distance from the swim finish to T1 than it is for IM Lake Placid or Ironman Wales.
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This seems to be going well /pink
This is literally what this vocal subset of folks has been begging for. What this site has been promoting for years.
When someone says “this fast person deserved a slot but didn’t get it”, and the total number of slots is fixed, that is tantamount to saying somebody else didn’t deserve their slot. Certainly the somebody else isn’t one of the folks who beat that person in their own AG. So by process of elimination it’s got to be someone in another age bracket, of another gender, or both. You are saying this person’s performance in one AG was “better” than a performance in another, different, AG. Which obviously implies that not only is it possible to compare cross-AG, it should be done in this case!
The entire “deserving fast women were unfairly missing out on slots” campaign relies entirely on the premise that cross-AG competition is possible and necessary.
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Just raffle off the spots
Winning for Ironman profitability
2015 me would like a word with the idea of IRONMAN and lotteries or raffles.
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Claiming the Kona coefficient is off requires data. Otherwise it’s just bias and rock-throwing at cohorts that showed up and performed at specific races. At IMWI, M30–34 simply outperformed and earned the most slots. Glad @latkin is here laying out the numbers for anyone who wants to read them.
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Ahhh, sucked back in with the central planning insult bait dog whistle. Can’t help myself.
You nearly have me agreeing just to stick it to the central planning statists.
But when I consider what will happen. M40 won’t roll very far at all and F30 and M25 to pick a couple at random roll to 20th and 30th place.
So a highly competitive athlete gets skipped over while a much less competitive one makes it.
I think you’d be better off in this scenario with top 2 get a slot as long as the AG is greater than 25 people. Otherwise top 1. From there you just assign them proportionally. 25 per ag is a damn low bar to set so any complaints about not getting more slots for that is insane.
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Unpopular opinion: kill proportionality with fire. You shouldn’t get rewarded because you had a bunch of pack fodder also show up.
And if that roll down in a couple groups that we need for growth over the long-term means that we wind up hooking someone into tri for life…so be it.
We went through some of this in the other thread, but the utilization of top 20% of finishers within certain age groups winds up expanding the number of athletes counted to include Legacy / non-qualifiers at a higher rate, resulting in some meaningful movement in the coefficients if you calculated off of top 3, 5, or 10 finishers (regardless of AG size).
So the current system works for you then, lol.
I’d be for 50-50 men’s / women’s split, and go from there. But that should shock nobody here.
It doesn’t but it also doesn’t work. Men are 65-70% of Ironman registrants in any given year, sometimes 75%. Giving away slots to people who didn’t bring you here reminds me of Bourbon Distilleries shipping thousands of bottles of LE’s to Europe instead of servicing their home market (the people that brought them here).
At least he qualified it with “probably”. And he might be right. If I had to bet, I’d say it’s off, too.
But instead of crying about it and giving up, I’m (futilely, needlessly, pointlessly, arrogantly, yeah I know) at least trying to dig in and advocate for fair and statistically sound improvements.
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this is also annoying. Ironman did everything to roll out the red carpet for women too kona and women took it and left and the rest didn’t show up to kona or Nice.
We have a few women blaming ironman right now and men rather then blaming “Women” and their inability to attract friends into the sport.
It reminds me the Bill Burr WNBA stand up when they say to men you better support these women. And then you ask the women did you go to the games , and the response is silent “ dear women, NONE OF YOU WENT TO THE GAMES. YOU FAILED THE WNBA. “
And this is right now not a men’s problem right now it’s a women’s problem right now. they failed the IRONMAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS not the men.
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Why don’t you, and anybody else advocating for equal slots, put your money where your mouth is and advocate for a 33%/33%/33% slot split between women, men, and open division?
Do you support that? If not, please provide your reasoning, which can’t contain any appeals to participation proportions. Because, remember, any solution based on those should be “killed with fire” in the name of equality.
As a “proportionalist” (lol) I will absolutely stand behind a proportional allocation that includes open division, in alignment with participation rates.
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Ok how about this as a potential middle ground
- Split the slots not by AG but by gender
- Slots are based on gender proportionality per race
- Each gender is guaranteed 1 slot per AG at a minimum no matter the share of finishers
- Women get an extra 5% if their share is less than 40% and an extra 3% is their share is between 40-50% (boost to help grow participation and engagement)
- The performance pools are then calculated gender specific like 70.3 worlds
So if there are 100 slots and 30% of finishers are women there would be 35 female slots and 65 male slots.
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