May 2015

Ironman Australia 2015 – Analyzing Results

February 26, 2017

Course Conditions

This year’s race in Port Macquarie had pretty slow conditions, especially on the run. A low adjustment of -2:35 (mainly caused by a -1:16 run) leads to a new course rating of 4:15. After a few year’s of smaller fields (9 athletes in 2012 and 8 in 2013), this year had a larger field with 16 Pros.

Male Race Results

Paul Ambrose took the lead in the second half of the bike, building a lead of almost 7 minutes into T2. Luke Bell was working hard to close the gap and whittled it down to about a minute with 5k to go. Paul was then able to find another gear and won by just over two minutes while Luke Bell had to settle for second. Brian Fuller finished third, resulting in an all-Australian podium.

Rank	Name	Nation	Swim	Bike	Run	Time	Diff to expected	Prize Money
1	Paul Ambrose	AUS	00:47:34	04:39:24	03:05:22	08:35:53	-12:50	US$ 10000
2	Luke Bell	AUS	00:44:58	04:49:01	03:01:01	08:38:34	-14:46	US$ 5000
3	Brian Fuller	AUS	00:48:28	04:49:53	03:08:30	08:49:39	-14:36	US$ 3250
4	Luke Martin	AUS	00:50:30	04:54:20	03:08:13	08:56:19	00:32	US$ 2500
5	Nick Baldwin	SEY	00:48:24	04:46:59	03:21:11	08:59:44	06:07	US$ 1750
6	Carl Read	NZL	00:50:28	05:07:47	02:58:47	09:02:08	04:31	US$ 1250
7	Petr Vabrousek	CZE	00:52:43	05:01:17	03:18:07	09:16:07	14:01	US$ 750
8	Dan McGuigan	AUS	00:58:38	04:51:16	03:23:50	09:18:50	-40:59	US$ 500
9	Pete Jacobs	AUS	00:44:59	04:57:28	03:53:06	09:38:34	49:52
10	Graham O’Grady	NZL	00:44:56	04:59:05	03:51:24	09:38:34	08:22
11	Matt Randall	NZL	00:55:20	04:59:21	03:54:28	09:52:35	00:28
12	Josef Svoboda	CZE	01:09:27	06:07:50	04:16:34	11:42:28	-15:48
	Matt Burton	AUS	00:52:37	04:56:32		DNF
	Peter Robertson	AUS	00:48:27	05:05:48		DNF
	Lachlan Kerin	AUS	00:48:21			DNF

Both Luke Bell (3.665) and Paul Ambrose (2.875) will some more Kona points for a safe July slot. However, Pete Jacobs validated his Automatic Qualifier slot with a 9th place finish in 9:38. He was in the lead until 120k on the bike, but said on Twitter after the race that he ran out of gas at that point.

Female Race Results

Lisa Marangon was leading the race into T2, but had to end her race early in the run. At that point, Jessica Fleming took the lead, but she was run down by Michelle Bremer who won the race with the fastest marathon. Jessica finished second, while Michelle Gailey took the third place in her come-back race.

Rank	Name	Nation	Swim	Bike	Run	Time	Diff to expected	Prize Money
1	Michelle Bremer	NZL	00:53:13	05:18:15	03:23:17	09:38:24	-07:28	US$ 10000
2	Jessica Fleming	AUS	00:56:26	05:11:50	03:30:35	09:42:18	-10:34	US$ 5000
3	Michelle Gailey	AUS	00:52:54	05:24:59	03:28:56	09:50:51	00:01	US$ 3250
4	Marie Sorrell	NZL	00:55:52	05:24:53	03:32:24	09:57:06	n/a	US$ 2500
5	Caroline Gregory	USA	00:53:15	05:44:45	03:35:35	10:16:56	-03:13	US$ 1750
6	Michelle Wu	AUS	00:53:18	05:54:08	03:31:52	10:24:49	19:30	US$ 1250
	Lisa Marangon	AUS	00:51:59	05:13:34		DNF
	Christie Sym	AUS	00:53:01	05:16:57		DNF
	Marina Jurjevic	AUS	01:00:14			DNF

At this point, it seems unlikely that any of the female Pro athletes from IM Australia will be able to get a Kona slot.

Number of IMs before Kona

May 1, 2015

In my post on Why I am #50WomenToKona I mentioned that Kona WPROs raced more often than their male counterparts:

For Kona 2014, the average number of IMs of the male Pros is 2.8, while the female Pros had raced 3.4 IMs.

Some of the feedback I have received indicate that this not widely known, so this post adds some more detail.

First of all, a clear definition of what I mean by “number of IMs before Kona 2014”. Here are the conditions I have used for the averages used in my post:

races on or after August 31st 2013 (the date of IM Japan, the start of Kona 2014 qualifying)
races before October 11th 2014 (the date of the Kona race)
Ironman-distance races (regardless of wether they are “official” Ironman races or races run by other organizations such as Challenge)
races that an athlete started (so including finishes as well as DNFs – both are counting towards the “fatigue” an athlete has to deal with before Kona)

Some of these conditions can be fiddled with, but the overall result is still the same – WPRO have raced around 0.5 more IMs than their male counterparts. Here’s a quick comparison of different conditions:

	Male Average	Female average
IM-distance starts	2.87	3.44
Ironman starts	2.75	3.25
Ironman finishes	2.40	2.94
Ironman finishes up to August	2.40	2.92
Ironman results counting in KPR	2.28	2.79

Staying with my original definition of “IM-distance starts”, here is a look at the distribution of athletes for the number of races before Kona:

IMsBeforeKona

You can clearly see that the main cluster of male athletes has done two or three IMs, while most of the women have done three or four races.

Here is a detailed look at the athletes in each of the groups:

No of Races	Male	Female
1	Terenzo Bozzone Richie Cunningham Jan Frodeno Paul Matthews Andy Potts Timothy Reed	Catriona Morrison
2	Bart Aernouts Craig Alexander Igor Amorelli Kyle Buckingham Daniel Fontana Joe Gambles Ben Hoffman Jeremy Jurkiewicz Sebastian Kienle Timothy O’Donnell Filip Ospaly Ivan Rana Andrew Starykowicz Boris Stein Tim Van Berkel Frederik Van Lierde Cyril Viennot	Corinne Abraham Liz Blatchford Leanda Cave Daniela Ryf Caitlin Snow Kelly Williamson Heather Wurtele
3	Faris Al-Sultan Marko Albert Tyler Butterfield James Cunnama Victor Del Corral Bevan Docherty Nils Frommhold Elliot Holtham Pete Jacobs Christian Kramer Eneko Llanos Chris McDonald Luke McKenzie TJ Tollakson Maik Twelsiek Marino Vanhoenacker Michael Weiss	Simone Braendli Mirinda Carfrae Linsey Corbin Mary Beth Ellis Lucy Gossage Rachel Joyce Meredith Kessler Caroline Steffen Amanda Stevens Jodie Swallow Yvonne Van Vlerken
4	Paul Ambrose Romain Guillaume Marek Jaskolka David Plese Andreas Raelert Ronnie Schildknecht Axel Zeebroek	Natascha Badmann Gina Crawford Amber Ferreira Julia Gajer Sofie Goos Asa Lundstroem Elizabeth Lyles Kristin Moeller Kim Schwabenbauer Beth Shutt Michelle Vesterby Bree Wee
5	Christian Brader Justin Daerr Daniel Halksworth	Melanie Burke Katja Konschak Lisa Roberts
6		Sara Gross
7	Harry Wiltshire	Jackie Hering
8	Matthew Russell

Not all of this racing has been motivated by a desire to qualify for Kona – of course there are other reasons for racing such as trying to win an Ironman or to earn some prize money. Looking at those athletes with five or more races, I think that they were motivated more by trying to qualify than by making money: Only Sara Gross has made more than 20,000$ – she made 40,000$ by winning IM Brasil and IM Mt. Tremblant – but she to race Mt. Tremblant in order to qualify.

In summary, the data shows that women Pros raced more often than their male counterparts. The data also indicates that this is a result of the lower number of Kona slots for women and the resulting higher number of points needed to qualify.