Also, this was not an error as I have reached out to the race director and timing company, who then contacted USAT and were told “Invitational” waves aren’t scored. The below is a quote from these discussions.
Here are the USAT ranking rules from their website:
“*For category purposes, any athlete that does not compete in their age group wave will be considered open for that race. All athletes attempting to qualify for Age Group National Championships – Olympic-Distance will be required to race within their age group at any on-road or off-road triathlon race.â€
This quote is a slightly different topic, qualification for Nationals.
For both Nationals qualification and USAT score, it depends on how the race director reports the results to USAT, or so I was told about 10 years ago when I communicated with USAT and a race director about this.
Races can have an elite/open wave in which athletes are put back into their age group for awards and the race director reports the results in a way that doesn’t indicate that an athlete was in an elite/open wave. This should result in elite/open wave athletes getting a USAT score and being able to qualify for Nationals.
Races can have an elite/open wave/division that is awarded and reported separately from the age group division but as part of the same race. This should result in these athletes getting a USAT score (treated as part of the same race as the age group division) but NOT being eligible to qualify for Nationals through this race.
Races can have an elite/open division that is reported as an entirely separate event/race. This event would also not be a Nationals qualifier but SHOULD still be scored by USAT. The one caveat here is that I think this separate race still needs to have age groups divisions within it. I have only seen this once (Elkhart Lake Triathlon), but it was definitely still scored by USAT, just as it’s own little race.
The second way mentioned is what I’ve most commonly seen. With this you just have to be aware that if you want to quality for Nationals you can’t race in the elite/open division.
I’m guessing the race director in your case reported it as an entirely separate race without any age groups. This may be why it wasn’t scored.
However, some other oddity wouldn’t surprise me. I haven’t been impressed with the people running USAT rankings lately after trying to get some obviously wrong race results corrected last year (I told them exactly what they got wrong and how to fix it but they refused to do anything). They also had at least one professional in their end of the year age group rankings magazine issue. They’re either incompetent or just don’t care.