Sensible decision 
If not massively annoying.
But they could’ve increased the swim to 5km to match the old Nice distance 
Be interesting to see what FVL does on the bike now.
Out of their control and they seem to have done their best to preserve a race. This is one of those situations where I feel for everyone, but you just need to pull your socks up, add 5 watts to your target power, and destroy yourself on the shortened run.
France is taking an ultra precautious approach in this heatwave due to the number of deaths in 2003. Fair enough if athletes want to expose themselves to the risks, however the point about emergency services is completely fair
Yeah they should have made it 4/120/30 and returned to the iconic Nice Triathlon days!
Posted this on the heatwave thread.
You can’t blame the French, and I think some people are being selfish, they’ve just had their warmest day ever, volunteers have to be out all day helping and as they’ve said the emergency services have probably got plenty of extra work with the conditions than dealing with 100’s of people who have chosen to race and might end up making themselves ill or worse.
When I did the race in America last year I heard a few moans about the swim being shortened, the river was flowing that fast I think barely 10% of the field would have made it upstream to the turn buoy.
Jeff
Maybe they could extend the swim to cover the lost bike and run mileage, that way the tattoo parlours can stay in business.
In Nice with French friends who are racing. We were just taking about this as the announcement was made. All my friends are swimmers so they’re not bothered.
It’s hot. Hottest I’ve ever seen Nice. But even the French are annoyed with the reaction.
What reaction?
From competitors?
Or the announcement of shortening the course?
the reaction of the government and what the “prefet” is asking of the organisers.
The kids and ladies 5km has been cancelled completely.
Seems a bit pointless to me in a way. It’s still the same swim, they’ve cut 28km off the bike so 1-1.5 hrs less, then cut about the same time off the run.
So still a 7 -14 hour day for some people.
I appreciate it’s bad conditions and they need to do something but if it’s that bad surely doing this makes little difference?
I don’t know. I think 2 hours off an average finisher’s time is a huge difference. When do people really start to struggle? Second half of the marathon. This shortens the distance enough to try and reduce that risk in very hot weather. I don’t think it is an accident that they cut the run % most of all. Also, it is almost a historic Nice distance, but obviously they couldn’t increase the swim to 4km as that would have caused outrage.
I think they have done what they needed to do, and it is better than a cancellation of the swim or run, for example. At least this one is still a triathlon, and it is still meaningfully long.
They need to increase the swim to 4km
I am staying with a French doctor who has done tri’s for well over 30 years including the original Nice triathlon in the 4-120-30 format. The organisers here would’ve been under pressure to change something so they’ve negotiated a pretty decent outcome for everyone. That 2 hours less will make a difference. Returning to the original format would’ve been a good laugh but hey.
There are still rumours flying round about the run being shortened again but tomorrow is supposed to be cooler.
It is a different kind of heat here this weekend. Normally there’s a nice cool breeze off the sea - that’s not the case, it’s a sauna descending from the north.
Looking at Accuweather, it’s going to be 30 in Nice and 36 in Frankfurt 
Google hottest city in Germany. Guess what historical climate data says…
I’m sure when I did the race in 2009 the bike was actually only 172km, so short but within IM’s course distance tolerances. They probably just needed to take out the out-and-back section before the long descent to reduce the actual distance to 152km.
That run is absolutely brutal. Until much later in the day there’s no shade at all apart a short section by the airport.
Good to know the Men’s 5km is still on then I guess…
Yeah. Not bothered about the irongirl debate.
In my group we had the fastest ladies swim time, top 20 men’s swim, and a veteran of about 20 iron distances races and they blimmin suffered. Most of them doing the same time or slower than their normal IM time.
Bit of controversy about running out of water but haven’t caught up with all of that yet. I did notice though that the tri mood in France is moving to that of the UK - IM attracting many more “one and done’s” and “all the gear no idea”.
I don’t know about running out of water, but the year I did the feed station at the top of the big climb ran out of bottles 
. People towards the back of the field chucked their empties at the drop zone but were then told that there were no fresh bottles, so they had to get off their bikes, grab discarded bottles from the floor and then get them filled