Several top end athletes are suggesting their bikes were tampered with in T1 after they started the swim.
They are all potential AG winners and all had loose saddles, loose seat posts and tyre damage. There are at least 4/5 of them. To stir the pot a little more the winner of that age group was previously banned for drug offences!
Is it really that cut throat?
The winner has a checkered history as well
Spicy!
Being discussed in this thread: The 2024 IRONMAN Age Group World Champions - Triathlon Forum - Slowtwitch Forum
Just saw Jack Kelly’s post on IG.
It’s definitely interesting that so many had issues with their bike, but I’d like to know if other AGs also had issues in similar numbers or if the 35-39 stands out.
Maybe it was someone that messed with a lot of bikes, and Miao being the winner is just a coincidence.
This is insane to me. These guys are competing for participation awards and they feel the need to sabotage their competitors? YIKES.
What’s the tea on this racer??
And name??
My bike was sabotaged in Aix 70.3 a few years ago. I was in the race for my age group win and this incident really devastated (in my triathlon drama mood) me at the time. Yes this does happen.
What a bunch of losers. They are all also rans because the best people in the world in that age group are racing pro. Once they get up to 45+ all the best still racing are in the age group. Putting that gripe aside of the inflated self importance that the pointy end of any age group that is of pro athlete age, how does someone get into T1 to tamper? Do you mean a fellow competitor hangs out and waits for his competitors to leave and messes up a bunch of bikes?
Perhaps a rogue volunteer/ security person
If some percent of the super fast people are willing to use drugs and risk cancer, heart damage, auto-immune issues to stand on a podium for bragging rights, I can believe they’d also stand around looking at bikes and then walk by and make a quick seat adjustment on the way out when no one was looking. Wouldn’t take much.
It’s a shame, because I personally like walking by and looking at all the bikes, but I can see how procedures might get put in place to prevent this in the future.
If it was indeed sabotage it would take quite a bit of organisation to pull this off at such a scale.
Since there is no evidence, this sounds a lot like typical social media conspiracy and virality.
The transition area in Kona is very small and packed with volunteers, officials, media, etc. How can you even do something like that without being noticed? And then do it to several more riders?
Flat tire exploding in transition is possible due to heat as the temperature goes up or those special racks they use and the way they hug the wheel. Or a combination of things. The racks have a knob to adjust them, you could have it too tight or too loose.
Besides, the transition is so tight it’s far more likely to cause something by accident.
Also, to do it in the morning just before closing of the transition or during the swim -as it’s been suggested - seems particularly difficult.
I’m not sure what could cause loosened seatposts. Humidity of the night clearing the carbon paste? Rising temperature in the morning? Bad luck?
Confirmation bias is definitely a possibility.
Totally agree. It also seems to me to be completely counterintuitive to the spirit of endurance events where one of my favorite aspects is the sense of community with your fellow competitors and race participants where you know how much time, dedication and effort it takes to get to the start line of one of these events, and you all share in that common experience. I get hyper-competitiveness, but what kind of sadistic sociopathic a$$hole does something like that to another racer’s bike? And for an AG’er? Juxtapose that against the real pointy end of the field and stories from Kona this year of Cam Wurf giving another competitor a replacement for a broken chainring pre-race.
I don’t agree. Participants have access to the entirety of the transition area. How long are you at your bike in the morning? 10, 15 minutes? There’s too many people to remember everyone who was nearby. Everyone in transition is too nervous about their own race to notice what’s going on around them.
Walk up to a bike like it’s your own. Reach down into the transition stuff, fiddle about like you’re double checking. Check the bars, loosen the seatpost, spin the pedals, check the tires.
Doing it to one person would be trivial. Come back 30min later and do it to another. TBH surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
Ya, but it sure takes a lot of balls or just be completely sociopathic and nonfeeling to not be sweating bullets you’ll have someone walk up to you and say, “what are you doing with my (or my friends) bike?!”
I agree though that it’s possible.
Well said.
To add to this point: This wasn’t nefarious, but the last tri I did someone had racked their bike by the front brakes instead of the seat and it was making a mess of the rack space. I took 30 seconds to flip their bike around and go back to setting up my own space. Zero people around took any notice. I could have just as easily done something worse. Also I did find the athlete and give him a heads up on what I did. He was appreciative.
Unrelated, but I saw a participant hand a bottle or something to a volunteer friend before the swim start, and the volunteer put it in his run/bike bag.
Participants don’t have access to their bags on Saturday, so it’s definitely cheating.
It seems pretty easy to have an inside volunteer doing shady stuff
This seems the most plausible to me. Buddy signs up for transition during a certain time. Has total access with no question as to why they are walking up and down looking at bikes. A simple paper with names and bike numbers in the pocket and boom…race day your buddy is at least 15 minutes ahead of everybody on the bike.
I think a volunteer walking around the bikes with hex key loosening seat posts is much more sus than athlete. no one keeps track of who’s bike it is and people would just assume the athlete is tweaking their own bike.
Either way takes a lot of balls and zero morality.
If an athlete did this he would have had to wait until pretty close to transition closing to ensure the various athletes didn’t return to their bikes. The same with a volunteer, once transition is cleared of athletes lining up in the swim corrals it’s very empty in there and skulking around would be obvious.