Comparing Kona Pro Rankings to TTR

At the end of July, the first round of Kona qualifiers were decided based on points accumulated under the Kona Pro Rankings (KPR). This blog has a look at athletes who made it into IM Hawaii but aren’t ranked very high in the TTR, and some well rated athletes that haven’t managed to snag a Kona slot.

Update on September 3rd: I’ve added some more infos (in italics) after the final round of qualifying races.

Athletes not qualified because they haven’t raced (enough)

If you want to qualify for Kona, you have to race at least one WTC Ironman race outside of Hawaii to be eligible. Well rated athletes that haven’t made it in include

• Chris McCormack – not interested in IM Hawaii while trying to qualify for the Olympics
• Sebastian Kienle – two sub-8 races in Roth give him a great TTR, but no “official” IM race
• Michael Raelert – had an injury just before IM Germany and had to pull out
• Tim Berkel – seems to focus on Challenge races, just did a few 70.3s
• Sandra Wallenhorst – hasn’t had a result since IM Germany 2010 (she was disqualified in Kona)
• Sam McGlone – is completely missing in the KPR rankings (also last result I have is from Kona 2010)
• Gina Crawford – is also missing in the KPR, but has raced IM Wisconsin 2010 which would have given her a slot under the old rules
• Andreas Raelert – didn’t have a race at the end of July, but raced IM Regensburg (even if injured), so he secured his spot by now

You also have to race quite a few races to rack up enough points. The following athletes just didn’t have enough WTC races to qualify:

• Jordan Rapp – always racing around 8:30, but just one IM race (IM Arizona) and two 70.3s (He won Canada, so he has enough points now, but he’s probably not interested in racing Kona.)
• Rebekah Keat – one IM result, but was mainly racing Challenge races (thanks to reader Jaime for pointing her out in the comments!)
• Aaron Farlow – winner of IM UK, but that was his only race
• Kristin Moeller – same story: won IM UK, but no other results
• Mary Beth Ellis – two great IMs winning them both (Austria, Regensburg), but not enough points as of now (She managed to win Canada, too – three wins in eight weeks! But it remains to be seen how fresh she is going to be if she races Kona.)

If you want to put together the strongest field in Kona, then these athletes should be in. (There are a few other athletes such as Jo Lawn that should be in and will probably make made it as August qualifiers.) Mary Beth Ellis is still in the gray zone – not sure if she’s going to do another IM race (Canada?). However, most of the athletes made it pretty clear that they are not interested in racing IM Hawaii (such as McCormack) and apparently haven’t even purchased a pro license (McGlone, Crawford – probably because of injury and becoming a parent).

Athletes who qualified because they raced often

Then you have a few athletes that race a lot and therefore rack up quite a few points:

• Petr Vabrousek – one of the few athletes with 5 qualifying IM races
• Balasz Csoke – he has improved quite a bit over the last years, but his rating is still lagging a bit

There are also a few women who are currently just outside that raced quite a lot (Miranda Alldritt, Desiree Ficker, Hillary Biscay). But all in all, you have to be a pretty solid athlete to be able to make it into Kona using this strategy. Still, I think WTC should limit the number of races it takes into account for the KPR (currently, it’s the five best races; three or four sounds more sensible to me).

How good is the KPR in getting the strongest field for Kona?

Based on this analysis, I think the KPR has done a pretty good job of selecting the best athletes for the Kona race: the fastest athletes made it in.

Maybe with the exception of Chris McCormack (who would have been automatically qualified and may have had second thoughts after not really making progress in ITU racing),  athletes that didn’t qualify wouldn’t have been able to qualify under the old rules (with direct spots in IM races). The best example is Michael Raelert – he’d have had to race some Ironman to qualify under the old rules, too. It is unfortunate that he chose a pretty late race, got an injury and couldn’t heal in time. But he is young and will have his shot at Ironman in the next years.

The story is a little bit different for the last three athletes on my list (Rapp, Farlow, Moeller). They would have gotten a Kona slot in the races they did, but I don’t think that any of these would be on the list of top contenders for Kona (sorry, Jordan). One possible change to the KPR could be to grant an automatic spot for any pro winning an Ironman. As we can see from this year’s results, that would have just added two or three more athletes to the race, so the field size wouldn’t have to increase too much.

Then again, the KPR and the new qualification rules probably lead to some athletes “writing off” Kona, i.e. instead of racing an IM here or there, focus on Challenge or Rev3 races (Sebastian Kienle and Tim Berkel seem to fall into this category). But based on my analysis, this mainly applies to athletes that would have been able to get into Kona if the field was larger, so it is more a consequence of WTC reducing the field size rather then the points system. Still, it would be interesting to see how Sebastian Kienle would race in Kona …

Thumbs up for the KPR?

So can we call the KPR a success? I think it is a bit too early for that: It remains to be seen what influence the requirement to qualify is going to have on the race in Hawaii. (The field size reduction may have some more influence, but that’s not my point here.)

I’ll take two examples: Craig Alexander and Andreas Raelert. Crowie used to do just one IM in the year and focused exclusively on Kona. He probably would not have raced CdA if he didn’t have to. So he may not be quite as sharp in Kona as in previous years. I’m not so sure if that is the case: He used to race quite a lot of 70.3s in the previous years which he didn’t do this year. This probably had more of a financial aspect for him, but I think he is still doing his very best to arrive in Kona in top form. It’ll be interesting to hear his thoughts on this, though!

Andreas Raelert is a different story. In previous years he raced in the summer (mainly Frankfurt), this year he decided to race in Roth (setting a new world record). He then had to do an IM to validate his spot (his second place in Hawaii already gave him enough points) and IM Regensburg seemed a good pick. Because of an injury he raced this very easily (especially on the run) – he probably wouldn’t have raced if he didn’t have to. Let’s just hope that he has enough time to heal his injury and that the requirements of qualifying doesn’t cost him the Hawaii race.

One more example is Mary Beth Ellis. She’s had a late start to her Ironman year, and even after winning two races (Austria and Regensburg) she didn’t have enough points to qualify. She then went ahead and won a third Ironman within eight weeks to grab her spot for Kona. She now has six weeks to recover for Kona. I’d say there are probably very few people who give her a chance to have a great race in Kona after this qualifying ordeal.

To sum up, so far the KPR is working fine, but let’s wait till after the Kona race before a final verdict.