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Challenge Cairns 2011 – Analyzing Results

Race Conditions

Challenge Cairns is a new Ironman-distance race which is part of the Challenge family. They had a pretty impressive lineup, and almost all the names from the Pro start list actually made it. (The notable exception was Cam Brown – I’m not aware of any injuries he has, so I’m not sure what the story is.)

We’ve had a reasonable number of rated athletes, so the adjustment (and course rating) of 12:30 is pretty solid. This means that Cairns is a pretty fast course (similar to Arizona or Texas) but not crazy fast such as Challenge Roth.

Male Results

Chris McCormack was the big favorite, and he didn’t disappoint with a 13 minute winning margin:

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Chris McCormack AUS 08:15:56 08:09:02
2 Matt White AUS 08:28:36 08:54:46
3 Tim Berkel AUS 08:29:20 08:34:47
4 Jamie Whyte NZL 08:35:07 08:48:26
5 Clayton Fettell   08:36:14 n/a
6 David Dellow   08:41:39 n/a
7 Jonathan Hotchkiss   08:42:49 n/a
8 Chris Dmitrieff AUS 09:17:03 09:09:42
9 Graham O’Grady   13:25:55 n/a

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

He did go a bit slower than expected based on his rating, but with his recent focus on Olympic distance racing, that was probably not realistic. (This also means that Andreas Raelert is now the #1 rated athlete by a solid margin.) His 2:51 marathon was still quite impressive. Matty White had another great race and took the second spot, Tim Berkel and Jamie Whyte also improved their ratings. Clayton Fettell had a good first IM distance race – it’ll be interesting to see him improve on his 3:11 marathon. 

Female Results

On the women’s side, the pre-race favorite also won the race:

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Rebekah Keat AUS 09:26:31 09:17:07
2 Michelle Mitchell AUS 09:30:41 09:42:14
3 Carrie Lester AUS 09:34:56 09:34:06
4 Candice Hammond   09:43:03 n/a
5 Belinda Granger AUS 09:44:41 09:32:31
6 Christie Sym AUS 09:49:09 09:55:52
7 Lisa Ribes   09:52:41 n/a
8 Simone Maier   10:05:37 n/a

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

However, Rebekah Keat was a bit slower than expected – but still managed to win, but only with a four minute margin to Michelle Mitchell who continues to improve her rating and has now climbed to #35 in the women’s rankings. Carrie Lester almost hit exactly her predicted time. Belinda Granger continues her rating slip, since winning IM Canada in 2008 she has not managed to hit her predicted times. However, with 22 races in my database she is one of the most prolific racers (only surpassed by Petr Vabrousek and Hillary Biscay).

Updated Top10 Ratings

The recent discussion on IM Talk about the Kona ranking prompted John Newsom to ask me for my Top 10 ratings. I’m not totally happy with the races that I have evaluated (most notable, Austria and Switzerland are missing which may lead to some shifting around), but I think the general TOP10 look quite stable, so I’ve decided to take the bait and publish the rankings and a little discussion. If you want to have a more detailed look at the individual race results, choose “Top 10 Ratings” from the menu or follow the link.

Male Athletes

Here is a table with “my” TOP 10 male pros:

Rank Name Rating Last Race # Races
1 Raelert, Andreas 08:19:58 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 5
2 McCormack, Chris 08:20:38 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 13
3 Alexander, Craig 08:22:44 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 5
4 Llanos, Eneko 08:27:07 IM Texas on 2011-05-21 13
5 Bracht, Timo 08:27:19 IM Lanzarote on 2011-05-21 13
6 Henning, Rasmus 08:28:21 IM Arizona on 2010-11-21 4
7 Vanhoenacker, Marino 08:29:18 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 6
8 Al-Sultan, Faris 08:31:27 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 10
9 Bockel, Dirk 08:33:29 IM Florida on 2010-11-06 4
10 Brown, Cameron 08:33:32 IM New Zealand on 2011-03-05 15

The top 3 athletes (Andreas, Macca and Crowie) stand a bit above the rest of the athletes. Between Andreas and Macca it is pretty even, but adding the results from IM Germany gave Andreas a little edge (he was just a few seconds slower than Macca in 2009, but beat him by more than 9 minutes in 2010). Statistically, Andreas is a little bit ahead, but the difference is so small that any new race could change things and I’d not really venture a guess if they actually ended up racing each other again.

After the Top 3, you have a group of very solid racers, each of which could win Hawaii without causing too much surprise. Eneko and Timo have raced quite a lot (and are the top athletes to look pretty solid for Hawaii) , Marino had to drop out of a few races lately, and Rasmus (also a lock-down for a Hawaii slot) may just have built enough experience to be in the running for a podium in Kona. Dirk Bockel is in  a similar point in his career.

Then we also have Faris Al Sultan (who is just a very solid racer, no big surprises on either side of the spectrum) and Cameron Brown (coming off another great win in New Zealand) – both of which “belong” in the Top 10, but are probably not in real contention for winning Kona.

Female Athletes

On the female side, here are my picks for the Top 10:

Rank Name Rating Last Race # Races Total Rank
1 Wellington, Chrissie 08:57:24 IM South Africa on 2011-04-10 10 81
2 Carfrae, Mirinda 09:18:38 IM New Zealand on 2011-03-05 3 179
3 Van Vlerken, Yvonne 09:22:54 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 6 211
4 Keat, Rebekah 09:30:19 Challenge Roth on 2010-07-18 9 259
5 Steffen, Caroline 09:31:08 IM Australia on 2011-05-01 6 263
6 Thuerig, Karin 09:33:25 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 3 275
7 Morrison, Catriona 09:33:38 IM Texas on 2011-05-21 4 277
8 Wallenhorst, Sandra 09:34:38 IM Germany on 2010-07-04 5 282
9 McGlone, Samantha 09:34:45 IM Hawaii on 2010-10-09 5 283
10 Marsh, Amy 09:35:27 IM Brazil on 2011-05-29 4 285

No surprises on the first two spots: Chrissie and Mirinda are just heads above all the other girls.

The rest of the Top 10 is an interesting mix between athletes still improving (Caroline Steffen, Cat Morrison, Amy Marsh), established solid racers (Yvonne Van Vlerken, Sandra Wallenhorst, Sam McGlone) and some “wildcards” – Bek Keat with great results on fast courses such as Roth, but never quite on top of her form in Kona and Karin Thuerig who can’t decide if she wants to be a cyclist or a triathlete. A very interesting mix for sure, but it seems that the top 2 spots are just out of reach for anyone not names Chrissie or Rinnie.

Comparing Thorsten’s Tri Rating to WTC’s Kona Pro Rankings

There are a few differences between the Kona Pro Rankings by WTC (used to determine the Kona qualifiers) and Thorsten’s Tri Rating:

  • TTR is time based, KPR is points based
  • KPR is limited to just one year, TTR uses all results of an athletes in a weighted fashion (i.e. old results count, but not as much as a new race)
  • KPR weights races (indeed, quite heavily so – with races such as Texas or Germany being six times more important than New Zealand or Australia), for TTR a fast time in New Zealand is as important as anywhere else (TTR tries to “normalize” results, so a fast time on a slow course results in the same adjusted time as on a fast course)
  • KPR also uses points from 70.3 races, TTR only uses Ironman-distance races (even a few non-WTC results such as Challenge Wanaka and Challenge Roth)

Of course, this leads to different TOP 10 rankings. Here’s a look at some notable Top10 athletes from the KPR that are missing from the TTR Top 10:

  • Men’s KPR leader Tim O’Donnell only has one result (so he’s not eligible for a Top10 ranking yet. His Texas result would put him right along Crowie.
  • Raynard Tissink (KPR#3) and Luke Bell (KPR#5) are rated 15th and 53rd. Luke is “hurt” by his attempts of breaking through – his results are either 8:30ish or 9:30ish.
  • Peter Vabrousek (KPR#10) is racing a million times. His results (and rating) of around 9 hours are good enough to collect a lot of points – but racing often in about the same time does not improve your rating.
  • On the women’s side we see similar issues, but the differences are not that large. Most of the athletes that are in the KPR Top 10 but not in the TTR Top 10 are ranked between 11 and 25.

All in all, I’m quite confident that the fields that you’d get from TTR and those you will get using KPR will be very similar. There is however one requirement that WTC has put up for Kona qualification that might turn out to be very interesting (at least for the men): The requirement to have at least one IM outside of Kona. Currently, only 5 of my Top10 (and only 5 of the Top 10 Kona finishers from 2010) have fulfilled that requirement, and the Top3 athletes haven’t and will probably struggle a bit (Andreas Raelert is rumored to race Challenge Roth, Macca prefers to shoot for the Olympics, and Crowie is still MIA after being sick for Australia).

IM Brasil 2011 – Analyzing Results

Race Conditions

The conditions is Brasil seemed to be very good this year. The race adjustment was 28:19 which is among the fastest I’ve seen so far. It was almost 12 minutes faster than the old course rating for IM Brasil, resulting in faster times than originally predicted.

Male Results

The close fight between the two three time winners Eduardo Sturla and Oscar Galindez didn’t last for much longer than the bike, as Oscar had to pull out of the race. However, Guilherme Manocchio pushed Sturla almost to the finish, at one time he almost closed up, but then Sturla managed to hold on for the win:

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Eduardo Sturla ARG 08:13:12 08:16:12
2 Guilherme Manocchio BRA 08:15:30 08:32:03
3 Ezequiel Morales ARG 08:19:49 08:25:44
4 Santiago Ascenco BRA 08:24:24 08:17:19
5 Chris McDonald AUS 08:24:34 08:26:10
6 Keegan Williams NZL 08:37:20 08:47:57
7 Ivan Albano BRA 08:48:57 08:45:13
8 Luiz Francisco Ferreira BRA 08:51:14 n/a
9 Lucas Cocha ARG 08:51:41 09:40:00
10 Mike Schifferle SWI 08:53:07 08:53:11
11 Antonio Filho BRA 08:56:26 08:58:04
12 Kelmerson Henri Buck BRA 09:06:20 n/a
13 Bonieck Clemente BRA 09:13:50 09:01:00
14 Christian Emiliano Carletto   09:28:54 09:25:50
15 Santiago Amigo ARG 09:40:11 n/a
16 Richard Wygand BRA 10:37:08 10:29:20

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

Ezequil Morales rounded out the podium. There are a lot of relatively unknown but good athletes in South America, so that the better known pros such as Chris McDonald and Keegan Williams didn’t really have a chance for a podium, even as they had pretty good races.

Female Results

Even though Amy Marsh finished a bit slower than the conditions would have allowed, she won the female race in a very convincing fashion:

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Amy Marsh USA 09:07:49 09:04:49
2 Lucie Zelenkova ZAF 09:14:23 09:18:59
3 Ariane Monticeli BRA 09:17:25 09:32:43
4 Hillary Biscay USA 09:33:14 09:47:51
5 Fernanda Keller BRA 09:48:03 09:45:21
6 Mariana Andrade BRA 09:49:41 10:26:35
7 Maria Omar BRA 09:51:19 09:52:20
8 Kelzie Beebe USA 10:01:52 n/a
9 Silvia Fusco BRA 10:18:38 10:08:40
10 Alessandra Carvalho BRA 10:19:49 11:36:57
11 Amanda Balding USA 10:37:24 10:39:21
12 Mariana Guimaraes BRA 11:41:05 n/a
13 Ana Lidia Borba BRA 12:03:10 09:35:44

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

After Amy Marsh Lucie Zelenkova and Ariane Monticelli were the expected second  and third finishers. It was good to see Hillary Biscay having one of her better races in the last few years, and Fernanda Keller finishing a strong fifth – at age 47!! I wish I was ever going to be as fast as she is now!

IM Lanzarote 2011 – Analyzing Results

Race Conditions

The conditions in Lanzarote were pretty good – at least for the Lanzarote standards. The adjustment for this year was zero, and Lanzarote continues to be the slowest IM course in my database with a course rating of negative 2 minutes (i.e. it is about 2 minutes slower than IM Hawaii).

Male Results

The race was won by Timo Bracht in a pretty convincing fashion, but it was enough to come in close to the time he was expected to do:

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Timo Bracht GER 08:30:34 08:30:53
2 Konstantin Bachor GER 08:44:05 09:17:21
3 Esben Hovgaard DNK 08:54:37 08:48:48
4 Joel Jameson   09:01:48 n/a
5 Nicholas Peter Munoz ESP 09:02:44 09:39:15
6 Gregorio Morales ESP 09:03:45 09:14:45
7 Christian Nitschke   09:05:34 n/a
8 Rafael Wyss SWI 09:05:41 09:32:48
9 Aleksandar Markovic DNK 09:17:28 09:13:00
10 Bo Ballegaard DNK 09:25:35 09:16:35
11 Dirk Wijnalda NLD 09:30:25 09:13:56
12 Damien Landon FRA 09:48:51 09:46:10
13 Fernando Cuenllas   09:59:58 n/a
14 Ivan Tejero Vazquez   10:35:24 10:33:58
15 Jerzy Kasemier NLD 10:40:15 09:54:35

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

A couple of people had really good results, most notably Konstantin Bachor who came in second. Relatively unknown Esben Hovgaard came in quite close to his first, great result from IM Florida and rounded out the podium.

Female Results

On the female side, late entries Rachel Joyce and Natascha Badmann snagged the first two spots:

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Rachel Joyce GBR 09:28:12 09:40:37
2 Natascha Badmann SWI 09:43:39 09:28:18
3 Karina Ottosen DNK 10:10:14 10:04:14
4 Heidi Jesberger GER 10:28:32 10:16:35
5 Emma Smith   10:31:07 n/a
6 Nicole Woysch GER 10:52:01 10:36:17
7 Joanna Carritt GBR 11:09:59 10:32:50
8 Esther DeVries   11:16:33 n/a

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

Rachel posted a great result, and her rating leaves her just a few minutes outside the TOP10. It was also good to see Natascha Badmann posting a result after her last race from 2007 and a few DNFs in between.

IM Texas 2011 – Analyzing Results

Race Conditions

This year was the first time that an Ironman was held in Texas. Even with the hot and humid weather the course turned out to be pretty quick, with an adjustment of 15:34. Only IM Florida (about 100 seconds) an Challenge Roth (a bit more than 5 minutes) are quicker courses.

Male Results

Tim O’Donnell had a great first IM race, and it took an excellent performance by Eneko Llanos who won the race. Luke Bell (coming in third) was also in the mix for quite a while and seemed to be really happy with his performance.

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Eneko Llanos ESP 08:08:20 08:13:43
2 Timothy ODonnell USA 08:09:50 n/a
3 Luke Bell AUS 08:12:22 08:41:56
4 Jan Raphael GER 08:20:41 08:34:59
5 Jozsef Major HUN 08:24:17 08:36:35
6 Axel Zeebroek BEL 08:28:07 08:51:23
7 Justin Daerr USA 08:29:44 08:45:30
8 Patrick Evoe USA 08:32:29 09:06:58
9 Petr Vabrousek CZE 08:37:59 08:46:04
10 Torsten Abel GER 08:38:40 08:44:02
11 Mike Neill CAN 08:39:40 08:46:28
12 Sergio Marques PRT 08:48:57 08:52:51
13 Luke McKenzie AUS 08:52:07 08:34:03
14 Matthew Russell USA 09:03:06 09:13:00
15 Michael Lovato USA 09:03:49 08:43:51
16 Raul Furtado   09:09:39 09:07:49
17 Brad Seng USA 09:15:13 09:02:47
18 Sebastian Pedraza ITA 09:16:38 08:56:44
19 Allan Villanueva   09:26:46 n/a
20 Hirotsugu Kuwabara   09:55:29 n/a
21 John Flanagan USA 10:02:23 09:46:28
22 Steven Osborne GBR 10:02:23 09:54:28
23 Jerome Bresson CAN 10:02:23 09:45:26
24 Daniel Schmoll   13:07:28 09:03:29

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

A couple of highly rated athletes had to drop out (e.g Chris Lieto) or didn’t even start (haven’t seen a mention of Rutger Beke). As usual, the first half of the field had good races, while the second half was struggling – even some big names such as Luke McKenzie and Michael Lovato.

Female Results

Cat Morrison posted a great result – except for Chrissie Wellington’s time in South Africa it was the fastest IM time this year. Her 8:57 (adjusted to 9:13) lead to her new rating of 9:33 which also allowed her to move into the TTR Top 10.

Rank Name Nation Actual Time Expected Time
1 Catriona Morrison GBR 08:57:51 09:24:23
2 Kelly Williamson USA 09:07:54 09:36:38
3 Sofie Goos BEL 09:12:53 09:34:04
4 Tyler Stewart USA 09:13:13 09:30:40
5 Tine Deckers BEL 09:19:27 09:33:01
6 Kim Loeffler USA 09:20:04 09:36:40
7 Desiree Ficker USA 09:24:09 10:19:44
8 Jacqui Gordon USA 09:27:20 10:03:30
9 Joanna Lawn NZL 09:32:19 09:15:56
10 Lauren Harrison USA 09:46:22 09:55:54
11 Michaela Giger SWI 09:58:43 10:19:06
12 Maki Nishiuchi JPN 10:06:29 10:06:38
13 Sharon Schmidt-Mongrain   10:09:03 n/a
14 Miranda Alldritt CAN 10:19:12 10:48:13
15 Dede Griesbauer USA 10:28:23 09:35:57
16 Caroline Smith   10:35:06 n/a
17 Jocelyn Wong USA 10:50:50 10:24:01

Expected time is based on athlete’s rating (prior to race) and race conditions.

Almost the full women’s field managed to post faster times than predicted – maybe they were aided just a little bit by the large men’s field? The ratings before the race were close enough and the race proved to be about as exciting as I was hoping for. Desiree Ficker managed to turn in a solid time after a string of DNFs and not so good result – and she still only managed to come in 7th!

I’m sure that Joanna Lawn and Dede Griesbauer were not happy with the way their races turned out. Pre race favorite Jo Lawn was about 15 minutes slower than predicted and was beaten by eight women racers. Dede Griesbauer was almost one hour slower than her rating would have predicted – I’m afraid she’ll have problems to qualify for Kona this year.

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