Now that the July races are over and the first round of Kona qualifiers has been decided, it is time to update the Kona odds.

Men

Some of the top contenders validated their Kona slots in the July races.

The main changes are a consequence of the following results:

• Marino Vanhoenacker won IM Frankfurt, putting him into a solid statistical 2nd biggest favorite for Kona.
• Andreas Raelert had a sub-standard (for him) results in Frankfurt, so his statistical chances decreased a bit.
• Cam Brown’s chances decreased a bit – even though he posted a solid result in Roth, it was not on the “winning Kona” level.

Women

There were a few changes on the women’s side as well:

Here are the main events resulting in changes:

• Caroline Steffen won IM Frankfurt in convincing fashion, further closing the gap to Rinnie.
• Rachel Joyce also had a great result winning in Roth. Maybe she can continue the British dominance in Kona?
• I finally had to remove Cat Morrison from my Kona odds – she is recovering from an injury and is not going to be able to qualify for Kona 2012. Hopefully she’s going to come back stronger than ever and will be able to play a role in the next years.

After all the races in June and July, it was time to update my TOP 10 Ratings page.

Here is a brief look at the changes:

• After Andreas Raelert’s sub-par (for him) result in Frankfurt, his rating dropped to 8:16:50. This allowed Crowie to move into the first spot with his rating of 8:15:01. Andreas is still second.
• Dirk Bockel moved up one spot based on his winning result in Regensburg.
• Julie Dibens hasn’t raced an IM for more than a year, so she dropped out of my ratings. (I still have Chrissie and Karin Thürig in there, their last races were Kona 2011, so they’ll drop out in October.)
• Similarly, Yvonne van Vlercken hasn’t posted an IM result – she had a number of DNFs. She also dropped out of the ratings.
• The two “vacated” spots were taken up by Sonja Tajsich (now 8th with a rating of 9:26:20 after racing Challenge Roth) and Linsey Corbin (10th with 9:27:51 after IM Austria).
• Rebekah Keat moved up a few spots with an improved rating of 9:24:34 – this is a result of adding the Challenge Copenhagen results from 2010 and 2011 (two races she won).

The first round of qualifiers for Kona 2012 has been decided and will probably be announced by WTC in the next few days. But as there are no more races that hand out points, so we can already have a closer look.

My basis is the KPR standings and for the men, some additional well known athletes. I’ve annotated the WTC list with some more information:

• Q – “Q”  if the athlete is a July qualifier
• Validated – “no” if the athlete has not raced and IM
• Raced Kona 2011 – “no” if the athlete wasn’t on the Kona start list

It remains to be seen if all athletes accept their slots (their were some declines last year). There will be second round of qualifiers at the end of August: 10 more for the men, and 5 more for the women.

Men

Update: Raynard Tissink was missing on the official WTC list, instead Michael Raelert was assigned a July spot. There were some rumors that Raynard Tissink stopped racing professionally, but I’m still trying to find out some more info. Greg Bennet was also not listed as an automatic qualifier, not sure why that would be the case.

Women