I’m just curious.
I had the same thought.
We can certainly eliminate:
IMFL, Clearwater, GulfCoast, and Eagleman.
Other possibles for elimination - IMAZ? Steelhead 70.3?
I’m sure there are many more.
IMLP.
Other than the very start (but it’s a climb, so “drafting” isn’t really what’s going on at that point) and the Haselton Rd out and back, it’s a pretty clean course. Or, at least it was from what I saw of it this past year.
Any race with an adequate number of waves. Timberman has over 1500 athletes and is always very clean. Lots of waves + an appropriately hilly bike course…
Ironman Wisconsin was NOT a draft fest from my perspective this year. Lots of rolling hills seemed to keep people very seperated.
I agree with ML, LP is a very clean race and you can easily chose to ride clean all day. The only place with congestion is the far end of the out and back on the first loop. I was out front from the swim that I did not need to deal with the congestion, which was great! I found Kona quite clean too. Yes, there are a few guys in the first 10 miles who can’t let people go, but really, there is lots of room on the road to ride clean. After the first 10 miles, things were strung out where I was on the road.
Vineman.
I saw no packs at Eagleman the last two years. They have like a dozen waves, 8 minutes apart. Maybe it’s just that I’m a FOP swimmer, so I don’t roll through a bunch in my own wave, but I certainly go through a lot of cyclist in prior waves, and I didn’t see any drafting at all.
Agreed. I was all over the course doing updates for Ironmanlive.com and I saw no packs at all. The trick with IMWisco is the bike is constantly going up and down. There is very little flat on the course at all and this year the one flat section also had the stiffest head-winds on the course.
Fleck
Have you completed an Ironman? I’m just curious.
Thanks. I actually meant Iron or Half-Iron distance race. Doesn’t matter if it is actually an M-Dot race or just another one.
Usually, though, the other non M-Dot races aren’t as big, though.
At IMC this year, the number of riders on the course in the first 60k or so made it hard to strictly comply with the drafting rules (at least if you came out of the water in the middle of the pack)
BUT there was a heavy presence of officials on the course and my sense was that most people were doing what they could to comply with the spirit of the rule. I always try to comply with the no drafting rule but I was particularly observant of it in this race because of the frequency of oficials riding by. Last year at the same race, I got passed by a pack of at least 25 riders riding in tight formation at about the 50 or 60 k mark and I did not see anything like that this year.
At Kona, where I was much farther back on the bike, I didn’t see any obvious examples of groups breaking the drafting rule.
Grant
Agree on Moo, felt it was very clean in 06. Could this have to do with the rain? 
Not nice to eat dirt for 5 to 6 hours…
So: Choose a hilly, rainy course if you want a fair bike-ride!
Axel
I am not sure how many people took aprt in IM UK and HIM UK but they are sufficiently hilly to not be draft fests.
Also, IM NZ and IM Korea weren’t either, but for different reasons.
How does IM CdA fit on the drafting scale? Curious, as I’m doing this race next year, and I was quite disappointed at Ironman Florida in both the amorphous draft packs and the bold, solo drafters.
" . .and the bold, solo drafters."
How do you draft solo?
Fleck
I did CDA in '04, it was kind of sketchy for the first out and back around the lake. I had to hit the brakes a few times rather than give out too much too soon and get by the groups. Not as clean as LP, but way better than Fla.
How do you draft solo?
I just mean the guys riding by themselves, not in a pack, hopping from one wheel to the next. I saw a surprising amount of this and was pretty surprised by their audacity.
There is very little drafting possible at IMoo, you are always either climbing - doesn’t matter much below 15 MPH - or descending - get too close at 30 MPH while you’re on your aerobars and you end up eating asphalt. Due to the terain, your speed on any one section is highly dependent on your riding style - whether you push the hills or relax more on the hills and push the flats - even at the same overall bike split. As someone else mentioned, in '05 it was hard to draft in the gusting cross-wind.
The best I have personally seen are Vineman and CDA.
The worst I have seen was Wildflower, 56 miles with pelotons and not a single official.
Dave