Or 15% of average of the podium.
1 Like
These ideas sound good on a forum but would be difficult to deliver at the awards maintaining all the woop woop needed to make folk feel good about parting with their cash especially those that were borderline.
3 Likes
I meant 2021!
Damn Covid 
9:17 + 9:45 + 10:10 = 29:12 / 3 = 9:44 x 1.15 = 11:11:36
(Thelwall, Fogarty, Lanigan - Dokas mate was 4th 
)
Yeah - I’d go for that suggestion 
@doka - Absolutely agree. But it’s pretty simple. And people looking for KQ have poured over their age group rivals results and done multiple Excel sheets to know where they should be, right?
I was looking at <11:20 for a spot, knowing those top 2 had said they wouldnt take it.
Would’ve got one, too, had I finished.
Even with the punctures 
At least my kitchen is nice
2 Likes
Took his spot, went 9:31 in Kona 
Only three people did IMUK IN 2020.
Rookie was last, Ste Walton beat me in a sprint finish after carrying him 26 miles !!
7 Likes
Agree with wanting to keep world championships an elite event. The joke roll downs makes it lose all prestige.
Might as well have a qualifying WC event and an open ballot for rest of places if want to preserve numbers. Issue would be if IM believe people would be willing to pay to race Kona without being able to call themselves world championship competitors
(although knowing triathlon many would anyway).
ETA: %of winner and especially podium although better in theory makes it messy in reality. I’d have consider maximum of 5 roll-downs, or same number roll downs as slots to make it one roll for each slot.
5 Likes
And giving places to celebrity chefs!
3 Likes
There is already some kind of pay to play auction isn’t there?
The roll down issue may not water down the field as much in reality as it could theoretically. We hear about one or two races rolling down deep, but we don’t have the stats for the whole Kona field.
I’d go as far as saying that as long as 65% of the field are “legitimate” qualifiers then you still have a legitimate WC event.
Looking quickly at M45; of 566 finishers, 315 were sub 11 and of those 73 were sub 10 with the podium split across five minutes…looks competitive to me. 
2 Likes
What if 35% of the TdF became etape cyclists, and they extend the cut off times to suit?
ETA:
I’m definitely not disputing that it’s competitive to place highly at Kona wrt last paragraph.
And I’ve also spokenly positively about my surprise at Cairns at how much uptake there was, the only ceremony I’ve been to and had 80-90% of slots taken by top 10 in the AG. But still have no problem with that being the standard to be 100%.
1 Like
I’m not sure it would make any difference at all to the jerseys or podiums. But that’s not a AG event and it is a team event so it’s not directly comparable.
Good point its not AG.
Do you or anyone else know of any similar sports that do have AG championships? Swimming does but it’s based on qualifying times and hence everyone has reached a pre-defined standard.
1 Like
That’s not a world championship, but if you’re doing prestige events where the most elite and anyone are in the same race, there’s loads of marathons, and supposedly the next olympic marathon will be open to all.
If your argument about the world championship was about mass participants distorting the event, then I’d have a lot of sympathy, but the event is already way too big to not impact the result, and it’s those never going to win 11 hour under 50 men that are packing the course and influencing the result, not a few more at the slow speeds.
2 Likes
Yeah, @joex alluded to this with his post above.
It’d be nice to have a column or two featuring; how many times in Kona previously, where they qualified, in what time, and it what AG/OA position 
I’d posit the majority of folks are actually quite rapid, but are woefully under prepared for Kona, or, just want to experience it and have an extremely expensive day out 
It’s even worse for UTMB now. They’re branding it as the World Series final which gives the impression you need to qualify.
Whereas in reality you just need to do one of their qualifiers and get lucky in the lottery, you could walk round and finish a minute before the cutoff.
2 Likes
I wanted to ‘race’ Kona because it’s Kona not because it’s the World Champs. That’s not going to happen now so I might have to go look into hiring a bike and take part in a DIY day or Kona LCW.
5 Likes
given the number you’ve done don’t you qualify for a Legacy slot?
Sadly not, stuck at 11 branded.
2 Likes
ah - thought you’d done more branded
Trouble with it now is to get the legacy you need to do two consecutive years and I can’t face the disappointment of something going wrong in the lead-up to the event as happened with the two this year which turned great (for me) gains in training to a crap day/evening out so I’m out of long distance now.
4 Likes
Oh man, that’s crap to hear 
Was that the six punctures?