Thorsten

In an earlier post, I analyzed the implications of shortening the gap in Kona between the Pro Women and the Age Group Men from 25 minutes (as it was in 2012 and 2013) to 20 minutes (as it is currently planned by WTC for 2014), suggesting that a 25 minute gap would allow for a much cleaner women’s race.

In an interview with Triathlete, Mirinda Carfrae describes the discussion between some of the top Pro Women and WTC regarding the start gap in Kona:

We were asking for a 5-minute gap from the lead men and 25 minutes to the age groupers, which is what it has been the last two years in Kona. The first thing they told us when we walked in was that we will be starting 5 minutes after the pro men, age-group men will go off 15 minutes after us and age-group women will go off 15 minutes after that.

So we were all devastated as soon as they said that. In the end they compromised and gave us 20 minutes from the age-group men.

How bad would a 15 minute gap have been? Here’s the graph (for a general description and comparison to the 20 and 25 minute graphs, please check out my initial analysis) for a 15 minute gap:

It’s pretty obvious that the back end of the Pro Women would be in the middle of Age Group Men starting from the end of the swim. Also, the front of the Pro Women’s race would have been caught by the top age groupers towards the end of the bike – though not the leaders.

However, I think the gaps between the AG men around the Pro women wouldn’t be worse at 15 minutes than at 20 minutes:

• The number of athletes up to five minutes in front of Linsey Corbin (10th finisher) in T2 would change from 42 to 48 – not a substantial change.
• Similarly, Mirjam Weerd (25th finisher) would have to deal with 85 instead of 104 athletes – more or less a statistical blip, as most five minute groups in T2 have about 100 athletes.

Essentially, the 20 minute gap is more similar to the already rejected 15 minute gap than to the preferred 25 minute gap. So even if 20 minutes sounds like a fair compromise between 15 minutes and 25 minutes, it really isn’t. I don’t think that a lot of this data was apparent at the time that the gap was discussed, and I hope that the last word has not been spoken for 2014.

Last Sunday, WTC announced a number of changes to the KPR. Rather than go through the changes (other sites have already done a great job on this, for example Triathlete or Witsup), I want to focus a bit more on some of the details and consequences of this announcement.

Fewer Pro IM races in North America

One area of the announcement that has created quite a stir was that half of the North American Ironman races will no longer have a Pro prize purse and will no longer offer KPR points. After the changes are implemented, only the following races will remain:

• IM Chattanooga (September)
• IM Arizona (November)
• IM Cozumel (December)
• IM Texas (May, Regional Championship)
• IM Coeur d’Alene (June)
• IM Canada/Whistler (July)
• IM Mont Tremblant (August)

This will mean that there will be only seven professional Ironman races in North America, after 14 in 2014. This is reducing the number of Ironman races to 50%.

There hasn’t been an official explanation why these races were chosen over the other races.

It is difficult to go from the final decisions back to the guidelines that have played a role. In the absence of an official explanation why these races were chosen over the other races, here are my guesses:

• proper arrangement of races on the calendar (e.g. no overlap of races)
• cutting Pro races with a lower prize purse
• existing contracts with the towns hosting the events

What about other Regions?

At first, the changes were widely assumed to be a re-focusing of WTC away from the North American market towards markets where they face stronger competition by Challenge (i.e. Europe and Australia). However, on the 2015 events page there is the following statement:

“2015 IRONMAN Pro Event Schedule will be updated promptly as events are confirmed and finalized for Europe and Asia Pacific region.”

I have asked WTC about changes in other regions and received the following statement:

The most significant changes will be in the America’s.  Some changes and refocusing of money and points strategically in EMEA region.  Status quo in AP region with an eye to continue the process of refining the schedule. [..] The politics of removing the Pro component requires more consideration and negotiation.

This indicates that we can expect some changes at least in Europe as well, but that there will be some time before final announcements.

What might happen in Europe?

The changes in Europe can’t really be determined without any insight into the discussion with the regional WTC organizations and companies. However, I’m pretty sure that there will be some changes. At this point, I think that there is only one race that we can be sure of: the Regional Championship race in Frankfurt.

Here’s a discussion of the pros and cons for the other European races:

• IM Wales and IM Mallorca (September) – both races with a small prize purse, but in an interesting time slot
• IM Barcelona (October) – new race with a large purse, but a potential overlap with Kona
• IM Lanzarote (May) – one of the few remaining licensed races, there have been rumors for a long time that it might be shut down, small prize purse, but in an interesting time slot
• IM France and IM Austria (early July) – overlapping races, also very close to Frankfurt, but with a large prize purse
• IM UK (mid July) – small prize purse, but I find it unlikely that WTC would cut both of the Great Britain races
• IM Switzerland (late July) – small prize purse, but in an interesting time slot
• IM Sweden and IM Copenhagen (August) – overlapping races, both with a good prize purse

Here’s my best guess at what the final Pro race schedule in Europe would look like:

• September/October: IM Wales, IM Mallorca or IM Barcelona
• May/June: IM Lanzarote or a re-scheduled IM France
• early July: IM Frankfurt (Regional Championship)
• late July: IM Austria (re-scheduled) or IM Switzerland
• August: IM Sweden or IM Copenhagen

Again, local considerations and existing contracts may change this speculative calendar. However, I think it’s likely that we will end up with a slightly lower number of Pro races in Europe as in North America. My speculation has five races, and I find that a reasonable guess in comparison to the seven races in North America. (There might be one or two more races, but I don’t see a clear favorites for these extra races or time slots.)

So .. what’s the total number of races?

We can be reasonably safe to assume that there won’t see any changes in Africa (only IM South Africa) or South America which only has two races (the established May race in Florianopolis which will become a Regional Championship and the new Fortalezza race is November).

There is currently one races in Asia (Japan), one race in New Zealand and four races in Australia. Based on the above statement („Status Quo“), there won’t be any changes. However, there will be two new races in Asia (Malaysia starting 2014, Taiwan starting 2015), and in exchange there might be one Australian race no longer offering a Pro purse.

I’m looking forward to formal announcements by WTC that will clarify their intentions for regions outside of North America.

To sum up my guesses, here is a look at the number of races in each of the regions after 2015:

• 7 races in North America
• 2 races in South America
• 1 race in Africa
• 3 races in Asia
• 4-5 races in Australia/New Zealand
• 5-6 races in Europe

All in all, my guesses point to 22 to 24 races (plus Kona). This is a bit more than half of the total number of Ironman races that will be on the calendar. If no races outside of North America lose their Pro status, there will be 29 Ironman Pro races (plus Kona) – but of course by 2015 there may be other new races and changed to the calendar.

What will happen to late 2014 races?

One of the stranger things with the WTC announcement is that the 2014 races will not change. For example, Ironman Florida 2014 will still offer prize money, KPR points and a chance to validate Kona slots, so the qualifying period for Kona 2015 (starting in September 2014) will be a mix of the „full“ and the „reduced“ race calendar. In fact, the North American races no longer offering a Pro purse (Los Cabos, Lake Placid, Boulder, Louisville) might be canceled out by new races (Mallorca, Malaysia, Chattanooga, Barcelona, Taiwan).

This also means that the 2015 qualifying season will be even more „front-loaded“ (points in the „old year“ around Kona) – while it is the stated intention of the new race calendar to move points into the “main season” (April to July). This might need some adjustments – or WTC views this as „transitional pain“ of moving from the old to the new system.

In all cases, the full move to the new schedule will take two years and we will see two major changes in the Pro race calendar (and the corresponding changes in the KPR cutoffs) in the next two years. Lots of uncertainties for the Pros that want to make it to Kona …

WTC has announced a new schedule for the Kona start:

• 6:25 a.m. Pro Men
• 6:30 a.m. Pro Women
• 6:50 a.m. Age Group Men
• 7:00 a.m. Age Group Women

This will mean that the gap between the Pro Women and the Age Group Men will shrink from 25 minutes (where it was in 2013) to 20 minutes. This blog post has a look at what this might mean for the WPRO race. For a number of reasons, we will focus this analysis on the end of the bike:

• Running together isn’t much of an advantage
• Most of the Pro Women are actually running faster than the fast male age grouper
• most of the potential benefit occurs on the bike (e.g. illegal drafting or potential benefits from following within a legal distance)
• most of the potential problems occur on the bike (e.g. women being blocked by fading male or males not accepting to be overtaken by a women)

Gap of 25 minutes

In case you are not familiar with my „race development“ graphs, here is a quick introduction using last year’s Women’s Kona Pro race: The horizontal x-axis shows different points during the race, such as the start, after the swim, and various points on the bike and the run up to the finish. The vertical axis shows how far back each athlete is from the front of the women’s race. So for example, you can see all the athletes start together, then some of them being as far back as 20 minutes after the swim, and – towards the end – the final change in the lead around 15mi on the run. Each of the red lines represents one women’s race. Now let’s add the Age Group Men (blue lines) to this graph: You can see the men starting 25 minutes behind the women, and the fastest of them slowly making their way through the slower Pro women. Here are some more facts that you can’t easily discern from the graph:

• The first Age Grouper off the bike was Marc Unger. His AG time of 5:38 corresponds to 6:03 for women. This means that Marc would have been the „12th women“ (i.e. all but eleven Pro women were behind him).
• Linsey Corbin finished the race in 10th place. She had a great run and was in T2 at just under 6:10 (corresponding to an AG time of 5:45). When she hit T2, there were already 33 age groupers in T2, 21 of them less than five minutes ahead of her (a average gap of just over 12 seconds or 120 meters).
• Mirjam Weerd finished the race in 25th place. Her time into T2 was just above 6:20. When she hit T2, 123 age groupers had overtaken her, 48 within 5 minutes (a gap of just over 6 seconds or 60 meters).

Gap of 20 minutes

Now lets assume that the Age Group Men started five minutes earlier. You can easily see how many more men overtake the women and how much sooner they start to do so: Here are the corresponding facts to the 25 minute section:

• The first Age Grouper in T2, Marc Unger, would have been the „8th women“ (instead of 12th).
• Linsey Corbin (10th women) would have had 75 age groupers in front of her (instead of 33). In the five minutes in front of her would have been 42 athletes (instead of 21) with an average  gap of 6 seconds (instead of 12) or 60 meters.
• Mirjam Weerd (25th women) would have had 227 age groupers in front of her (instead of 123). In the five minutes in front of her would have been 104 athletes (instead of 48) with an average  gap of less than 3 seconds (instead of 6) or 30 meters.

Assessment

While the difference between 20 minutes and 25 minutes sounds very small, the difference to the second half of the women’s Pro field is very noticeable. Around the 25th women there is an average gap of 30 meters – technically still enough to avoid illegal drafting (12 meters from back of the bike in front of you to the front of your bike), but it seems obvious that there will be some larger groups forming that might either help the slower bike riders or cause problems for those with a good finish after pacing their bike well. Therefore, WTC should strongly consider leaving the gap at 25 minutes.

Options

Here are the options that I see that result in a 25 minute gap between the Male and Female Pros:

1. Move all the age groupers five minutes back. If the cutoff can be extended a few minutes past midnight, no one will be impacted by this. If that is not possible, the only group that would really be impacted by this are the slow women age grouper who are finishing within the last few minutes before 17 hours. (Looking at last year’s data, there were two women between 16:55 and 17:00: Harriett Andersen at 16:56 and Karen Aydelott at 17:00:48 – I don’t know if she was an official finisher.)
2. Move just the male age groupers five minutes back. This will shorten the gap between the male and female age groupers to five minutes. There is probably good reason for a ten minute gap – a five minute gap won’t help much to decrease the congestion in T2 and the early part of the bike. With the recent WTC announcement, I don’t see this happen.
3. Have the Pro men and Pro women start five minutes earlier. This probably not possible because it’ll still be dark at 6:20.
4. Have the Pro women start before the Pro men. The idea of this is that the faster men overtake the women on the early part of the bike and that both races would then be „clean“. I don’t know if this has ever been tried before, and an important race such as Kona is probably not the right place to start an experiment.

Weighing all the options, I think that the first option (move both age group starts one minute back) is the best. To alleviate the concerns for the 16-hour-women, maybe it is an option for the slower age group women to start with the age group men. It’ll be interesting to see if WTC acknowledges the concerns of the Pro Women for a clean race and will be open to more changes of the Kona start times.