yeh - that wouldn’t work without 2 teams. A day between would work with one team (and a few spares) as that’s what TOs are used to at Multisport events with a day between each event.
Back to back 70.3s would also work with one team as the load isn’t so large.
No idea why I was convinced it was Thursday and Saturday 
@jeffb and the start time of events, virtual or real world 
Credit where credit is due, Ironman did a fantastic job this year, from an athlete’s perspective there were a few minor hickups, but nothing really significant. The locals who were opposed were very vocal in the local press, my impression is that the majority of locals supported the event, even if they were pretty inconvenienced. There was great surf and no wind on Saturday, the surfers were well pissed
I calculated that Kona benefits by upwards of $30m, that is around $500 per local resident, its not trivial and Kona really does need the money
I’ll leave this here, but will say I’m all for participation, but it’s like the London GFA times, even some of the ladies at I know think that’s a joke
All N.America as well.
I think there might be some outside of NA but this was on the IM California page so possibly regionalised?
Full list is here: Slot Allocation
Those are some pretty established races too. Can’t imagine participant numbers are that low with those
On women for tri slots I’m unconvinced.
Grantes I’m male, definitely not an expert, and would much rather hear well thought out opinions from people better at this that me. But what is an online forum for if not for indulging ourselves in our own opinions and sharing trotter shots? 
Women’s sport does face disadvantages at elite and participation level. I reckon the reduced participation is much more likely to be due to societal reasons rather than a dismissive biological explanation of being less competitive or not wanting to do sport.
The amount of extra slots at some races are huge Cairns next year having an extra 100 I think. Surely that will just be an arbitrary whoever wants one can have one, making it less aspirational to qualify, neither increasing drive to partake or strive for performance.
In addition, does the prospect of being able to do a second IM appeal enough to make someone do one in the first place? Maybe there will be a small uptake of people who already do tri doing their first IM because of it. Maybe some who already do will now do another one because of Kona. Both of which I think are likely to be 1-2 year effects and then once those people have done WC then what?
I don’t see how there will be any fundamental difference in long-term commercial growth that as a cynic is what I see ironman wanting.
More importantly to me I don’t see how there will be any difference in empowering women to close the gender gap in physical activity compared with the effects of things like Park Run, or this girl can campaigns.
Would love to be proved wrong. But ultimately to me it makes a mockery of the world championships. And I’m ashamed to say that every time I hear someone’s qualified next year it will make me dismiss their achievements. Hopefully just with an inside voice.
Ironically, you used have to qualify just to get into IM Oz, not validate with a HIM, properly qualify and it wasn’t a walk in the park. Ken Baggs would give some leeway if you’d tried 3 times I think but just getting in was not easy at all.
Interesting to see how that pendulum has swung.
I risk being very hypocritical, as I got a soft qualification at IM Lanza… I feel that my performances since and my result on the day validate (at least to me) that I did deserve a spot at the start line last week. However, I feel that Ironman is in the process of devaluing the world championship qualification massively. In the past every ironman athlete looked in awe at those who had qualified for Kona, qualification on its own meant something, only the very best AG athletes qualified for Kona (of course some qualified with Legacy spots as well). However, the last 3 months, Ironman has been practically offering spots to anyone who wanted them at some events. It will be interesting to see how it pans out going forward, however, I think that qualification may become significantly easier in the future, with big roll downs at late qualification events
I welcome Ironman’s effort to increase participation for women, however, I agree with everything that @Chriswim has written. I think that KQ for women becomes an almost meaningless achievement
Surely Ironman improving participation for the women should be focused on getting more females to the start line of individual IMs and 70.3s, increasing the competition and depth throughout the AG organically (which is happening anyway) and smoothly expanding the size of the women’s WC field over time to reflect that increased depth, rather than slightly randomly chucking out an extra 50-100 Kona spots here and there to anyone with the cash to take it at that particular race? And that then comes back to individual race organisers, national bodies and local clubs building from the ground up.
I don’t think the fields need to be anything like 50/50 gender split, that’s a very narrow and superficial view of these things (although it’s easy low hanging fruit for a corporation). What really matters is how the events are promoted, discussed, the respect given to the athletes, the prize money being equal etc… If Ironman properly presents through its coverage the men’s and women’s events as being on a level, and the women’s as not some kind of novelty add on, then the fact the field might be 30% smaller or whatever is totally irrelevant, again imv.
Fully agree. The irony is that some of the very best professionals have been women. If you created a top 10 list of IM GOATs, I think that at least 3 women would be there (Daniella Ryf, Paula Newby Fraser, Chrissie Wellington). This year both men’s and womens races were equally enthralling, coverage, prize money, prestige should all be the same
There has to be some middle ground. At the moment, the way the slots are allocated, finishing 2nd AG is often not going to be good enough. Lots of anecdotal stories of women with multiple 2nd places never getting the slot they are pushing for. These women should be able to get a slot next year no problem.
Same could be said of the very young and very old male agregroups, maybe it is the slot allocation maths that needs to be adjusted. But the cash cow MAMILs would miss out, and IM will not want that.
As for the WC being devalued, people say the same about the WTCS AG worlds. There is already a significant financial barrier that needs to be cleared. The people at the front are very good athletes, and should be respected for their achievements. Nearer the back people are making up the numbers, but if they can afford it and meet the criteria then more power to them.
without the age groupers at WT Champ events, frankly most would not happen - the AGs entry fees keep the events liquid. however I would say that GB AGers generally are more able than other countries due to our qualification process which many other countries (even some of the major ones) do not have and why we come back with so many medals.
that goes for triathlon (and many other sports) - participation numbers are much lower across all levels of events.
And I’m sure the same is true of IM WC. This isn’t the Olympics, sponsors and broadcasters and not queueing up to pay millions to be associated with the event.
Do you have much experience of encouraging women to compete in events? I don’t of course, but I do hear rather a lot from someone who does, and one of the big problems for those who want to compete in events is often too many events, not too few, you don’t know where the people you want to compete against are. So it ends up with all the events having too few.
Perhaps by not spreading them around, but by making some events have more, that’s the signal “come compete in this IM if you want to have a race, go do one of the others if you’re just a one and done person”.
Criticising the idea, when you don’t know the reasons - or what part of a wider system - is pretty unfair.
The main reason I found Kona such a horrendous place whilst there, was the overload of over competive 30-45 year old men - acting all weird 'cos a slightly tubby bloke was running, and anything that mitigates that by getting other groups there would be a great boon for my inpretation of the brand.
As you may know SERRL were having many issues first women said low entries as they were being dumped in the Cat3/4 crashfests, so they put on Ladies only fields, abilities then too wide, then SERRL were clashing with other local events spreading fields even thinner. but ending up with 3 or 4 in a race and vicious circle begins again.
Yep, huge issues trying to get races co-ordinated, which completely failed for anything but E/1 racing, so you’d have 5 women’s races competing for entries all in the same weekend, 'twas madness, which why I can appreciate biasing to just a few races might encourage more. I know that cycle racing overload of races with no co-ordination discouraged participation.
