Been thinking about this more, and the other post about the guy who missed “cut off” so people self seed close to front so they can get maximum time, meaning more risk for them. Rolling starts are a terrible idea!
Austria 70.3 was a great start, it was AG based, then a “mass start”. People self seed like any other tri, there’s no waiting 15minutes to cross the start line into a very busy swim, and the potential of being lapped by those that went 20 minutes before you. It’s OK for Kona now, used in most 70.3’s so have AG based starts, with self seeding so you don’t lose time by standing in line correctly, and there’s less risk of having 2000 people all together. Yes you will get people catching the earlier waves but its limited with enough space and your are actually racing your peers directly (if that’s your bag)
People still go to the front of parkrun’s so they get a few seconds even if they are in front of people much quicker so it’s not just a triathlon problem.
I’ve just looked up her race history on Coach Cox, and she normally swims at my sort of speed. 1:20 to 1:30 for an Iron distance. I normally find there is very little contact as most swimmers are just trying to get through to the end of the swim. It’s more likely she fell ill.
Not sure if it has been mentioned but there was a post shared on ST about one of the water safety crew who said he was diving down, felt like he had but had to go back up for air and couldn’t find her again.
I haven’t seen swim footage but assuming it must have been non-wetsuit or she opted not to as I just can’t really see how she got dragged down to the bottom?
Going back a few years obvs, but it would cost me about £1500 all in to do a Euro IM on my own (entry, flights, hotel, food, parking etc). A Full was about €550 iirc in 2019. The admin fee was a fraction of that, maybe €25 or so.
what an absolute ripoff
FRO
(the licence, not the race