Analysis

The interest into the first round of KPR cutoffs at the end of July is increasing. After having a look at the start lists for the last two races (Lake Placid and Switzerland on July 28th), here is an analysis of what the situation looks like and where I expect the cutoffs to occur.

Men

For the men, there are 40 July qualifiers. At the end of last year, I estimated the July cutoff to occur at 4.000 points.

There will be at least one extra spot with Crowie being an automatic qualifier. (Macca, the other past champion sits in #70 with 2.450. He gets a Kona spot, but doesn’t “move the line”.) It is not 100% clear how the 70.3 champion (Sebastian Kienle) is handled, but I assume that he also does not count against the number of July qualifiers. This means that the cutoff will probably occur at #42 – currently Chris Legh at 3.420 points.

For Lake Placid, these are the athletes close to qualifying:

• Andy Potts: 5.850 points (but still has to validate)
• Tim Van Berkel: 3.610 points
• Ian Mikelson: 3.325 points
• Andres Castillo: 3.280 points

Women

For the women, there will be 28 qualifiers at the end of July. It will actually roll down to #31, as there are two automatic qualifiers that don’t count (Leanda and Rinnie) and Kelly Williamson (currently sitting on #25) is not interested in racing Kona this year. Right now, #31 is Sarah Piampiano with 4.530 points.

There are no athletes on the Lake Placid start list that is able to reach close to that number of points: The athlete with the most points is Jennie Hansen with 3.240 points, but Lake Placid only offers 1.000 points to the winner.

Switzerland is a P-2000 race, and there are a few athletes that should be able to make the necessary number of points:

• Erica Csomor: 4.750 points, should be able to improve on that (provided she starts)
• Charisa Wernick: 4.360 points
• Sara Gross: 4.230 points
• Rebecca Hoschke: 4.150 points

Each of these athletes should be able to make the top 8 which would give them at least 1000 points and move them well beyond 5.000 points. This means that the last athlete to qualify in July should move four spots to the athlete currently in #28, which is Amy Marsh with 4.900 points.

There are a few athletes in Switzerland with outside/theoretical chances of qualifying:

• Stephanie Jones: 3.160 points
• Regula Rohrbach: 2.800 points

However, if they want to have a chance of qualifying in June, they would have to win the race which seems quite unlikely.

Seven more athletes will qualify at the end of August. Typically, the number of points needed to qualify at the end of August was lower than at the end of July. At the start of the year, I was estimating this cutoff to occur at 4.000 points. As the July number should be about 400 points higher that what I estimated, the August number will probably move by a similar number – to about 4.400.

We’re getting closer to the first cutoff for Kona qualification, so I think this is a good time to have a closer look at the KPR standings. This post looks at the men, the previous one looks at the women.

The exact number of points that is required for a Kona slot is not easy to determine as there are 40 slots at the end of July and another 10 slots at the end of August.  In my 2012 Rating Report (available in the sidebar) I have determined that 4.000 points can be considered a safe number for qualification.

Who’s in

Athletes who have won Kona in the last five years just have to race another Ironman to qualify:

• Craig Alexander (7.220 points, already validated in Melbourne)
• Pete Jacobs (6.000 points, plans to race in Frankfurt)
• Chris McCormack (890 points, will probably race in Cairns, but it’s unclear if he’s going to race another Kona)

As noted above, I consider athletes with at least 4.000 points as safe qualifiers. There are quite a few established athletes who took care of their Kona slots early in the qualifying period:

• Timothy O’Donnell (6.985 points)
• Faris Al-Sultan (5.688 points)
• Timo Bracht (5.300 points)
• Petr Vabrousek (5.120 points – with five Ironman results!)
• Eneko Llanos (5.085 points)
• Jordan Rapp (4.725 points)
• Ronnie Schildknecht (4.225 points)
• Dirk Bockel (4.090 points – cutting it close, and I’m not sure if he’s got any plans to add some more points racing ITU long distance and Challenge Roth)

We also have some athletes who haven’t raced Kona 2012 that already have a safe spot:

• Jimmy Johnsen (5.910 points)
• Bevan Docherty (5.900 points)

Who’s close to qualifying

We’re getting closer to the first cutoff for Kona qualification, so I think this is a good time to have a closer look at the KPR standings. This is the first of two posts. This one looks at the women, the next one will look at the men. (I’ll probably post that one tomorrow.)

The exact number of points that is required for a Kona slot is not easy to determine as there are 27 slots at the end of July and another 8 slots at the end of August. (This number has changed in the 2013 season which makes quoting a number even trickier.) In my 2012 Rating Report (available from the sidebar on the right) I have determined that 4.750 points can be considered a safe number for qualification.

Who’s in

Athletes who have won Kona in the last five years just have to race another Ironman to qualify. With Chrissie retired, the other two winners have already validated their slots:

• Leanda Cave (11.290 points)
• Mirinda Carfrae (6.320 points)

As noted above, I consider athletes with at least 4.750 points as safe qualifiers. There are quite a few established athletes who took care of their Kona slots early in the qualifying period:

• Carolin Steffen (9.720 points)
• Meredith Kessler (7.540 points)
• Gina Crawford (7.260 points)
• Sonja Tajsich (7.065 points)
• Mary Beth Ellis (7.000 points)
• Natasche Badmann (6.460 points)
• Michelle Vesterby (5.910 points)
• Linsey Corbin (5.665 points)
• Amanda Stevens (5.465 points)
• Rachel Joyce (5.190 points)

We also have some athletes who haven’t raced Kona 2012 that have a safe spot:

• Yvonne van Vlercken (6.165 points)
• Corinne Abraham (6.010 points)
• Jessie Donavan (5.450 points)

Who’s close to qualifying

Race Conditions

Race conditions were pretty quick for Australia (12:47 leading to a new course rating of 4:46), mainly on the strength of a fast run (almost 10 minutes quicker). However, the field were pretty small, so a few good runs (Luke, Patrick) may have skewed the numbers.

Male Race Results

It’s hard to believe that this is the first IM win for Luke Bell – he finally managed to follow up a good bike with a very solid 2:53 run.

Female Race Results

Rebecca Hoschke lead the race for most of the day. Ange Castle was just a few minutes behind, but wasn’t able to close the gap to Rebecca.

In other sports – such as golf – the main way of ranking athletes is by the amount of prize money they make. With all the data from the qualifying races, I’ve built one for Ironman Triathlons. It is also a convenient way of putting men and women in the same list.

Note: Since first posting this, I’ve received some feedback (notably from Meredith Kessler – many thanks!) noting that my data still contained some errors. I hope I fixed them in this updated version. I’ve also put some more work into better handling IM Cairns (100k€ and paying 10 deep). (This lead to some more changes, notably for Carrie Lester, David Dellow and Cam Brown.) Please let me know if there are any more issues!

Overall Money List

Here are the 20 athletes – both from the men and women – that have earned the most prize money in “official”, full-distance Ironman races in the Kona 2012 qualifying cycle (September 2011 to August 2012):

Rank	Name	Total Prize Money
1	Caroline Steffen	50.000
2	Mary Beth Ellis	40.000
	Jordan Rapp	40.000
4	Meredith Kessler	37.750
5	Marino Vanhoenacker	35.000
6	David Dellow	29.500
7	Carrie Lester	28.750
8	Cameron Brown	28.500
9	Simone Braendli	26.000
10	Craig Alexander	25.000
11	Matthew Russell	23.000
12	Linsey Corbin	22.500
	Clemente Alonso-McKernan	22.500
	Frederik Van Lierde	22.500
15	Sofie Goos	21.250
16	Eneko Llanos	20.500
17	Victor Zyemtsev	20.000
	Ezequiel Morales	20.000
19	Erika Csomor	17.500
20	Gillian Clayton	16.250

As last year, this does not include money from IM Hawaii, as this would seriously skew the data. Also, IM 70.3 races are not included. In addition, I’ve taken the liberty of classifying Cairns as a 100k$ race instead of the 100k€ race it was. I wanted to avoid dealing with foreign exchange rates. (Caroline Steffen noticed this little “mistake”.)

This list is an updated version of the one I posted in my 2012 Rating Report. Mary-Beth Ellis noticed that I was using the 2011 money scheme. (Thanks for letting me know!) It took a while to dig up the data, but the Championship races (Melbourne, Frankfurt and New York) had a larger purse (125k compared to 100k in 2011) and the races were paying less deep than they used to (e.g. Top 8 in the regional championships instead of Top 10). Also, some North American races paid significantly less in 2012 than they did in 2011 (e.g. St. George, Lake Placid and Canada, dropping from 75k total purse to 25k).

Compared to the first version of this post, I’ve added the money from the “accidental 70.3” race in New Zealand (even though shortened, the race gave out the KPR points and prize money as planned). I also had Coeur d’Alene in the wrong prize bracket (they moved from 25k in 2011 to 75k in 2012). Many thanks to Meredith Kessler for noting these factual errors. This change allowed her (and also Marino) to move up in the rankings and take the spot they earned.

Analysis

Here are some observations:

• Caroline takes the first place (winning the regional championships in Melbourne and Frankfurt) in front of Mary Beth Ellis and Jordan Rapp (also winning two races, but Texas and New York having a smaller prize purse).
• A bit of a surprise may be Simone Braendli, but she had three top 3 results (winning Cozumel, 2nd in South Africa and 3rd in Switzerland).
• The numbers are only slightly higher than last year. Outside of a good Kona payday, it is next to impossible to make a living on Ironman price money.