Understanding the Impact of Ironman’s New Slot Allocation System
The new episode of Tempo Talks delves into the significant alterations made to Ironman's world championship qualifying criteria, transitioning from a slots-based system to one predicated on performance metrics. We meticulously dissect the ramifications of this change, exploring its potential to enhance fairness and inclusivity within the competitive landscape of triathlons. As we analyze the inaugural reactions, it becomes evident that the majority of feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, suggesting a promising shift towards a meritocratic structure. The discussion encapsulates not only the evolving dynamics of triathlon competitions but also the implications these changes may have on future events and athlete participation. Furthermore, we recount the excitement from the Ironman event in Frankfurt, where Kristian Blumenfeldt triumphed despite facing unexpected challenges during the race.
Links to topics discussed:
The TriDoc Podcast
Matt's Instagram
Jeff's Instagram
Email Jeff: tri_doc@icloud.com
Email Matt: Matt@thetemponews.com
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Transcript
Welcome to Tempo Talks, a show that brings you analysis of the biggest stories in triathlon training, tips to make you a better athlete, breakdowns of the latest science and performance.
Speaker A:I'm Matthew Sharp, an olympian and triathlon 70.3 champion and co founder of the Tempo News.
Speaker B:And I'm Jeff Sankoff, the tridog medical contributor for Triathlete magazine, age group winner and coach at Life Sport Coaching.
Speaker B:Our goal, inform and entertain two perspectives.
Speaker B:One sport all things travel.
Speaker B:Now let's get into it.
Speaker B:Hey everyone.
Speaker B:Welcome to a exciting edition we have.
Speaker B:We are recording this as we do every week on Wednesday.
Speaker B:So you have.
Speaker A:Sure everybody will know.
Speaker B:What we're talking about.
Speaker B:But before we get to that, Matt, how are you doing?
Speaker B:Did you have a great Canada Day?
Speaker A:Yeah, a pretty good Canada Day.
Speaker A:Can't say I did anything really Canadian.
Speaker A:I actually probably had some maple syrup in my oats in the morning, so that was my homage to Canada Day.
Speaker A:But it looked like you had a good one.
Speaker B:It was good and bad, but it.
Speaker A:Was all good, okay?
Speaker B:Yes, it was all good.
Speaker B:I worked all weekend so I was off for a couple days including yesterday.
Speaker B:And my son who's been just destroying me and running since he started being serious about it.
Speaker B:I made the mistake of introducing him to cycling and gifting him my old carbon fiber road bike.
Speaker B:And now he's very excited about cycling.
Speaker B:He's a big Tad Kodacha fan.
Speaker B: ont range, about seven miles,: Speaker B:And we started on this thing and I was feeling pretty good.
Speaker B:I was pushing about close to my just sub threshold watts in the lower slopes and I'm feeling pretty good about this.
Speaker B:We're going up and he comes up alongside me and he's dad, how long's this climb?
Speaker B:And I look at him and I'm like, are you fucking serious?
Speaker A:He's breathing out of his.
Speaker A:He's breathing out of his nose.
Speaker B:He's just like looking at me like there's nothing.
Speaker B:I said, why?
Speaker B:I'm just trying to gauge my effort to see how much I should put out right now.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh my God.
Speaker B:And he goes full picacho and just zoom.
Speaker B:Gone, gone.
Speaker B:Never saw him again until the top.
Speaker A:At what point was this in the hill?
Speaker B:Oh, this is if you're familiar.
Speaker B:It's like within the first five minutes after you pass through the Gates.
Speaker B:And it was ridiculous.
Speaker B:It was so fast.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And now as we head into July, obviously we've got the Tour de France.
Speaker A:He's gonna be watching.
Speaker A:He's gonna be motivated to pull a few more tacks on dad.
Speaker A:So this might be a tough month for you on the bike.
Speaker B:It's gonna be awful.
Speaker A:It's gonna be awful.
Speaker B:I spent so many years good cyclist and I get to watch him just absolutely torch me.
Speaker B:That's what.
Speaker B:That's what 40 years and 40 pounds will do.
Speaker A:That's what you want as a parent, isn't it?
Speaker A:You want your kid to be dropping you up the hill someday.
Speaker B:Yeah, it totally is.
Speaker B:I just didn't think it'd be this quick.
Speaker B:But you know what?
Speaker B:It's been a joy and a pleasure.
Speaker B:These good kids.
Speaker B:And then I got to learn the full ball.
Speaker B:We just jammed out to tragically heaven to celebrate, which you're not Canadian.
Speaker B:Like, I don't know what that is, but it's a very popular community.
Speaker B:Anyway.
Speaker B:All right, so we are here now to talk about a couple things.
Speaker B:We're gonna get to this past weekend's excitement over in Frankfurt, where Christian Blumenfeld did exactly what Matt predicted.
Speaker B:And then we will touch on something going on at Roth this year, something that came out of a story from last year.
Speaker B:And before we do that, though, we want to talk about the big news of the day, which came out this morning.
Speaker B:I was trying to get work done and my phone was just blowing up with people contacting me.
Speaker B:So, Matt, what was that big news for?
Speaker B:People have been under a rock for the last couple.
Speaker A:No doubt.
Speaker A:I'm sure your circle has been going crazy about this news.
Speaker A:It's massive.
Speaker A:I think we've saw allusions to this before, but basically Ironman has now totally revamped its world championship qualifying criteria, essentially going from slots based allocation to a performance based allocation.
Speaker A:What do you think about, like, what this looks like?
Speaker B:Initially, my first thought when I heard this was the devil's in the details.
Speaker B:And as I dug into the details, I actually started to warm up to the whole thing.
Speaker B:When it was first presented to me, it was presented to me as there's going to be guaranteed slots for the age group winners for each age group division, men and women, that will roll as far as third place.
Speaker B:And beyond that, it goes into this kind of performance pool.
Speaker B:And all of the slots will then be allocated based on performance.
Speaker B:And I thought, that sounds interesting, but we're gonna have to parse out what that means.
Speaker B:And as I parsed it out during the day.
Speaker B:And as I started to see comments, starting to.
Speaker B:Because I initially said, oh, just wait till people come out of the woodwork and start bashing this and talk about how terrible.
Speaker B:For sure.
Speaker B:So far, the reception actually has been pretty much all positive.
Speaker B:I haven't seen a whole bunch of negative of you.
Speaker A:No, I haven't.
Speaker A: been talking about this since: Speaker A:So this isn't like in the last couple months, they're like, ah, let's toss this together.
Speaker A:It seems like they've really put all the effort in to kind of take into account the externalities of making a new system.
Speaker A:It seems quite bulletproof.
Speaker A:Like, really, you know, when it comes down to it, it does a good job, I think, of just rewarding performance relative to your peers.
Speaker B:On paper.
Speaker B:It's interesting.
Speaker B:I think it's going to depend on how it actually plays out.
Speaker B:So for people who don't know, let's just break it down as easily as we can.
Speaker B:There will still be a number of slots allocated per race as there are today.
Speaker B:That number tends to be somewhere between 30 and 50 for 70.3 races.
Speaker B:It can be as high as 75 or 100, depending on where the race is for world championships and where you're participating.
Speaker B:But that is not going away.
Speaker B:So if you go to a race where, or if you've been to a race in the past where there was going to be 30 or 40 slots, that will still be the same thing.
Speaker B:It's the way the slots are being given out.
Speaker B:So in the past, what they did is they said, we had 2,000 people at this race.
Speaker B:And they took.
Speaker B:They said, okay, we're going to give one slot to every age group that was represented, men and women.
Speaker B:So let's say that was 14.
Speaker B:I'm just making that number up.
Speaker B:So that means that if you had 30 and you took 14, that means you have 16 slots left.
Speaker B:So the way those 16 slots were then given out was they said, okay, we had the most people show up in the men, 35 to 39.
Speaker B:They represented 10% of the overall number.
Speaker B:So they're gonna get 10% of the slots that are left, which is 10% of 16 is 1.6.
Speaker B:So they're gonna get two more slots.
Speaker B:So that age group would get three slots total.
Speaker B:And they would do that for every age group that was represented.
Speaker B:And so because the men tended to be 2/3 of the race, women would tend to get one slot per age group.
Speaker B:Sometimes two.
Speaker B:And the men would have anywhere from three to four, depending on how many slots there were.
Speaker A:So because of this design, this is why we would see 18 to 20% women at like the Ironman World Championships because of the way that previous slot allocation was designed.
Speaker B:And not just that, it's also why you would see these ginormous age groups in like the men 35 to 39 because they tend to be overrepresented middle aged men.
Speaker B:Also, let's say the big sort of hump of participation tends to be men 35, 39 all the way to 50 to 54.
Speaker B:So you tend to see lots of participation there.
Speaker B:And that's where the most representation would be at these world championships.
Speaker B:Now this has changed of course with the introduction of the women for tri slots.
Speaker B:And that was great.
Speaker B:I think it got a lot more women to participate.
Speaker B:We had the split days.
Speaker B:We're not going to rehash the whole thing, but it did bring out a lot of criticisms.
Speaker B:What we started to see is we started to see a lot of diminishment of the World Championship by handing out slots to people who just happened to stand around at the awards for a while because we were getting people getting slots that were just left over because there were so many slots being given out.
Speaker A:And this was especially true with the Nice race that was people were like, oh, like they couldn't even give away slots.
Speaker A:And it seemed like really, especially for the women's edition at Nice, that was always the talking point.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it was very true also for 70.3, where you would have not just women, but sometimes men as well, where you would have people qualifying for world championships with times that were, let's just say, not really world championship relative to others.
Speaker B:So this was a complaint that was being out there for a while and Ironman was aware of it and they wanted to go to a Boston Marathon qualifying ideal.
Speaker B:And you can't really do that with Irma.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You can't say, oh, you have to be sub five because there are some courses where going sub five is just ridiculously hard.
Speaker B:And you also can't say sub five for that 60 to 64 year old, which is going to be very difficult.
Speaker B:So time standards aren't possible and courses make it all different.
Speaker B:So what they did was they came up with this normalizing factor.
Speaker B:I'm not entirely sure why they did it this way, but they came up with this normalizing factor which they've looked at the World Championships at the Ironman distance and the 70.3 distance over the last five years he came up with this sort of like age normalization factor.
Speaker B:So the older you are, the lower the fraction, the faster you are, the higher the fraction.
Speaker B:And what that means is it just means your finishing time at whatever race you're doing is multiplied by this fraction.
Speaker B:So if you're in the 30 to 34 men, which happens to be a very fast age group, your fraction or your normalizing factor tends to be about one.
Speaker B:So your time's not going to change.
Speaker B:But if you're in the 65 to 69 year old women, your normalizing factor is something like, I'm making this up.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:You'll get the idea.
Speaker B:It's about 0.65.
Speaker B:So if you did 13 hours at an Ironman and you multiply that by 0.65, you reduce your time by a third to around nine hours.
Speaker B:And therefore you are comparatively normalized against other people who race nine hours.
Speaker B:So it, yeah, gender and age neutralizes the race.
Speaker A:So this is, it makes me, I don't know, laugh a little bit because now if you're not maybe gonna be in the top three of your age group, instead of still just racing your age group, now you're racing everyone.
Speaker A:Like now everyone's at play.
Speaker A:It's not just an age group race anymore, it is a field race.
Speaker A:So I just have this vision of somebody staring at this young guy staring at this older lady on the start line, give her the eyes because he knows that they're all going after this age graded time.
Speaker A:I don't know, it seems funny to me.
Speaker A:It's a competition.
Speaker B:It is interesting.
Speaker B:And that's actually what they are doing is they're saying, okay, so now there's 40 slots for a RA we've given away the first slot or we've given away one slot per age group to first place or to at least the first three of each.
Speaker B:Not the first three, but one of the first three in each age group and then whatever's left.
Speaker B:We've now age and gender neutralized the race by using these factors and we are going to now just say the top 40 of that entire race get a slot.
Speaker B:So we did some sort of back at a napkin math today and it looks like this isn't going to change a ton.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:It will probably still look pretty similar.
Speaker B:I think this will benefit women.
Speaker B:This is going to benefit the fast women, which I think is great because too long.
Speaker B:For too long we've had fast women who are not able to get into the race because too Many of the slots go to the men.
Speaker B:And this will punish, not punish, but this will take away from some of the fast men in order to favor some of the.
Speaker B:But you know what?
Speaker B:Personally I'm okay with that.
Speaker B:I think that I know that the women will be okay with that.
Speaker B:And while it will be hard for the individual men who will lose out on this to be okay with it immediately, I would hope that in the grand scheme of things, although in this day and age, nobody's going to be happy about having anything taken away from them.
Speaker B:But I think on merit and I think it just seems like a fairer way to do things.
Speaker B:The only argument's going to be this normalizing factor.
Speaker B:And because it's.
Speaker B:Right now it's hand waving.
Speaker B:They haven't told us how they've come up with this normalizing factor.
Speaker B:So that's one of the things that I'm not totally comfortable with.
Speaker B:The other thing I'm not totally comfortable with is how are they doing this?
Speaker B:Because for years I've hated the roll down process.
Speaker B:I hate going there and staying for hours and hours.
Speaker B:It takes them forever to just come up with the stupid list of finishers.
Speaker B:So what are they going to suddenly now going to be able to come up with this list of finishers and have this whole pool like that just seems like asking them to do even more than.
Speaker B:I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker B:What do you think it.
Speaker A:Overall it definitely seems more fair, especially to women who've probably been underrepresented at world championships.
Speaker A:It's really, to me this all seems centered around Kona.
Speaker A:Like they're talking about 70.3 worlds and stuff.
Speaker A:But really the crux of this seems to be Kona.
Speaker A:Do you agree with that?
Speaker B:I think you're right.
Speaker B:I think that the onus is definitely because that's, let's face it, that's where the, that's where the controversy has been with Kona.
Speaker B:This is not going to solve the gender disparity.
Speaker B:We're still going to see more men going than women.
Speaker B:But I think this will reward those women who are fast and that's the way it should be.
Speaker B:This should be a world championship.
Speaker B:This should be for the fast people and this is going to let more fast women into the race, which I think is wonderful and I think is a great thing.
Speaker B:I think you will see right now women represent again, I'm making it up, but I think I'm pretty sure women represent around 35% or 30%.
Speaker B:It's between 30 and 35% of Ironman participants.
Speaker B:This may bump up women participation icona by about 5% more.
Speaker B:So they'll be overrepresented, but they'll be overrepresented by the fastest women, which I think is great.
Speaker A:Yes, for sure.
Speaker A:No, that's.
Speaker A:It's great to see them have their day for sure.
Speaker A:Do you think like less represented age groups could be at an advantage as this at this as well?
Speaker B:I don't think so.
Speaker B:I think this is really going to feed performance now.
Speaker B:Now the less represented age groups are tend to be the older and the younger.
Speaker B:They're still going to be getting their one slot.
Speaker B:They still get proportionally more slots competitors.
Speaker A:But if they don't have as many people in them like historically, wouldn't the times be a bit slower and therefore maybe a little bit more attainable?
Speaker B:No, no, because.
Speaker B:No, absolutely not.
Speaker B:Because remember.
Speaker B:Oh, you mean that, that normalizing factor, won't the normalizing factor favor them a little bit more?
Speaker B:Yeah, it depends.
Speaker B:It depends.
Speaker B:If you historically going to Kona in let's say the 65 to 69 age group, they generally tend to get one slot.
Speaker B:Sure, they're going to be but the man or woman who wins that age group is still going to be the fastest of that age group and there tends to be quite a gap.
Speaker B:Like I was looking back at Frankfurt, we were doing some math like to look at these numbers and my friend and I, we looked and we said here's the first place woman in the 65, 69, would she have beaten out the 10th place man in Frankfurt in the 35 to 39?
Speaker B:And she would have, but the second place woman in the 65 to 69 did not.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So I don't think it ends up.
Speaker B:So what that means is the first place woman would have already got her slot.
Speaker B:The second place woman would not have gotten in over the tenth place man.
Speaker B:So it didn't really, it didn't do anything in that regard.
Speaker B:And so I think that we're still going to see a lot of the same people qualifying.
Speaker B:The people who will now get to qualify who didn't are going to be the second and third place competitors who were really fast and just missed the podium.
Speaker B:And previously there weren't slots for them, but now there will be and they, they may tend to be in these smaller age groups because let's face it, the 35, 39 year old men, they already had three, four slots.
Speaker B:Now maybe they get two or three slots and that extra slot goes to another age group where there Was somebody who performed really well and deserved to go.
Speaker A:Yeah, relative.
Speaker B:I think that's cool.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's cool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm curious, do you think this will discourage people from competing if they're trying to qualify for Worlds?
Speaker B:So in a meaningful way?
Speaker B:We asked people to contribute to the Talk Tempo Talks group on Facebook with their thoughts on this and unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time to get comments because this only came out this morning and we're recording this afternoon.
Speaker B:But Brian Dunn and Ryan Clarico Clerico, they're two of our very contributors.
Speaker B:Yeah, Great contributors to the conversation there.
Speaker B:And they both raised a similar point, saying that there are a lot of people who go to specific races because they know there are fewer competitors and they're more likely to finish high up on their age group, but they may not be that fast.
Speaker B:And so is this going to discourage people like that from competing in an Ironman?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:There's definitely a subset of people out there who compete in Ironman just to try and qualify for Kona and to try to cherry pick races like that in order to increase their chances.
Speaker B:Are they going to not do it now because they feel like their chances are somewhat less, or are they going to train maybe a little bit harder to try and be a little bit faster?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And one of the things I was thinking about, like on the course when these athletes are racing now, it's like the pro series.
Speaker A:Every second matters.
Speaker A:This is now for these age group athletes who are maybe not going to win, but who are on the bubble.
Speaker A:Every second matters.
Speaker A:So you can't.
Speaker A:If you're sitting in.
Speaker A:You're sitting in third.
Speaker A:You can cruise to the finish line now.
Speaker A:You just got to go full tilt the whole way, which should make times overall faster going forward anyways.
Speaker A:So, yeah, it's just these second order effects of these decisions from Ironman.
Speaker A:So you're gonna see people a lot more sprint finishes in these age group races, I think.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The old days of.
Speaker B:I know for me, I don't like to pass people in the finishing chute when I'm coming to the carpet.
Speaker B:I like to let people have their moment.
Speaker B:I don't even know if I'm racing against them because of the staggered start.
Speaker B:Now.
Speaker B:Every second counts.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Watch out, people in front of Jeff.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:Yeah, he's coming for you.
Speaker B:If I'm.
Speaker B:But if I'm looking for a world slot, if I'm worried about a world slot, Like, I am definitely going to be pushing every way.
Speaker B:And this is, you know, Coach Juliet.
Speaker B:She's listening.
Speaker B:I'm sure she listens.
Speaker B:And she will be telling all her athletes the way I always do as well.
Speaker B:Transitions.
Speaker B:Transitions are going to count more than ever.
Speaker B:And I never got a chance to follow up with you.
Speaker B:I have to thank you for the best advice ever.
Speaker B:Cutting the wetsuit.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker A:Oh, sidebar.
Speaker B:Came off like butter.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker B:It was awesome.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker B:Best advice ever.
Speaker B:Matt Sharp, you.
Speaker B:It was a.
Speaker B:It was awesome.
Speaker B:I love that.
Speaker A:Perfect.
Speaker A:Glad I could contribute.
Speaker B:Do we have anything else on this subject, do you think?
Speaker A:Or another thought I had.
Speaker A:I was just curious.
Speaker A:Certain races you're talking about have more slots.
Speaker A:Like a continental championship.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like Ironman, Texas and Frankfurt this past weekend has more age group slots.
Speaker A:Could this almost like redistribute athletes to races with less slots?
Speaker A:Does that make sense or is it.
Speaker A:Does it not really matter?
Speaker B:I don't think so.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:And I don't.
Speaker B:I don't think so.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I don't choose my races based on.
Speaker A:If someone knows for a Kona slot is just gunning for that Kona slot and they're like, I need to do whatever it takes to get it.
Speaker B:But if you're looking for a Kona slot, you're tending to go to a race with more slots, not less.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You're not going to go to a race with less.
Speaker A:You don't.
Speaker A:It sounds bad.
Speaker A:You'd almost want more people in these races.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Everybody's pretty close together.
Speaker A:I don't want to say the drafting effect can help speed things up, but it can't hurt in a lot of ways.
Speaker A:So maybe it's actually better or athletes on the course.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker A:There's a conspiracy theory or something.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There was another thought that I had.
Speaker B:Oh, yes.
Speaker B:There was something that came up in the comments that people were asking, and I think this is pretty important to highlight in case anybody's wondering about it, is some people said this normalization of times.
Speaker B:How do you normalize, like a fast course like Oregon against a slower course, like, I don't know, what's a slow course?
Speaker B:Santa Cruz, Lanzarote, Ironman, Lanzarote, Ironman versus Maryland's Iron Man.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:How do you normalize those two to.
Speaker B:So it's important to recognize the normalization goes on for everybody at the same race.
Speaker B:You're not compared to people at a different race.
Speaker B:It's only.
Speaker A:Yeah, I was concerned about that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The performance pool is only everybody at one individual race on one individual day.
Speaker B:So you're not compared against any.
Speaker B:And that was not as, as I read through it the first time, I also thought that I was like, that's a weird way.
Speaker B:How so?
Speaker B:It is important that people recognize that.
Speaker A:Well, then there's something else too, because certain athletes might choose an Ironman California because it's basically this crazy fast down river swim because it might make it easier for them to start the bike in a better position to then get a slot whatnot.
Speaker A:So now this kind of gets rid of that in a way.
Speaker B:Why would that get rid of it?
Speaker A:Like, if it's not based on everybody?
Speaker A:At the end of the day, I feel like I don't know.
Speaker A:To me, it just doesn't seem like it makes that much sense to go chase a race like that.
Speaker A:Am I wrong?
Speaker B:Okay, so like I'm not the strongest swimmer.
Speaker B:I want to put myself in a position to do well, not just in my age group, but against everybody.
Speaker B:I then I tend to look for courses that are going to have faster swims, harder bikes and faster runs because that will.
Speaker B:Because I'm a strong cyclist.
Speaker B:And so I don't think that changes the equation for me.
Speaker A:So that's still a consideration for people then is to choose courses maybe that suit you better.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If you're a cyclist on hills, maybe you want to go to a hillier bike because relative to other athletes, you're going to be moving better.
Speaker A:Correct?
Speaker B:Yeah, there's, there's still.
Speaker B:This whole system is supposed to reward the best performers.
Speaker B:So you want to go to a course where you're going to be the best performer.
Speaker B:And I think that I know that I'm going to perform better where I get a current assisted swim.
Speaker B:So I'm going to go.
Speaker A:Maybe they'll open up more slots for these California type races with the downriver swim.
Speaker A:Maybe the demand will.
Speaker A:Instead of Texas selling out early in the year, that California race will sell out earlier in the year.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:I think we have covered that one in great detail, but if you have additional questions, comments or thoughts we want to hear.
Speaker B:So please either drop us a line or head over to the Talk Tempo Talks Facebook group.
Speaker B:You can answer the three easy questions and we will gain you admittance.
Speaker B:If you're not already a member, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker B:We would love to know what other questions and comments you might have for us to discuss on the program.
Speaker B:So please head on over and just.
Speaker A:To tie that up.
Speaker A:Do you think this is a win for Ironman?
Speaker B:I think so.
Speaker B:On first blush, I gotta say I have yet to see a press release from Ironman as momentous as this, be as universally accepted as this.
Speaker B:So I think so far this is a win, but the proof will be in the pudding.
Speaker B:I am racing in what, two weeks?
Speaker B:Just over two weeks, so I will let you know.
Speaker B:And if I go to Oregon and the.
Speaker B:I haven't decided if I'm going to try for nice or not, but maybe I'll stick around, try to convince my family to stick around.
Speaker B:I don't know if they're gonna be excited about that, but yeah, we'll stick around and we'll watch the roll down and we'll see.
Speaker B:Cause I will tell you, last year at Tri Cities where I wanted a slot for Marbella, we waited for almost two hours for Ironman to get their act together, to get the results printed out and to have all the slot allocation.
Speaker B:And it's like everybody's sitting there going, what the heck is going on?
Speaker B:This isn't Rockets.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker A:And maybe if they have the results, I don't know how they would do this, but maybe they could almost, once they get those results and tabulate it, maybe they could have, I don't know, AI or something do it.
Speaker A:They could almost send like a push notification through the app and you can basically accept your slot or, or decline it and then maybe it'll move down to the next person they get the push notification.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:Interesting.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:There are ways to do it.
Speaker B:Part of the problem now is you're going to have to wait because in the past you had to wait for the winner of each age group to finish.
Speaker B:Now are you going to have to wait, wait for everybody to finish?
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:I don't know how this is going to work.
Speaker B:Yeah, all right.
Speaker B:I guess we'll see.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:This past weekend we had the most interesting of Ironman races in Frankfurt.
Speaker B:It was really quite a show put on.
Speaker B:We had equipment failures, we had penalties, really weird running penalty.
Speaker B:I've never seen a running penalty before.
Speaker B:And then we had the ever sensational Christian Blumenfeld prevailing despite a stop for a bathroom break.
Speaker B:Matt, what was your take?
Speaker A:I think just to go through the race quickly.
Speaker A:I really thought there was going to be this massive 20 plus person group out of the water.
Speaker A:And I was actually up watching the first half of the swim and literally right off the gun it was Jonas Schomburg who I used to race in short Course, he basically went to the front and just started drilling it.
Speaker A:Like it went from people starting beside each other to basically being a single file line with the whole field by the first turn buoy.
Speaker A:So this was not going to be let's hang out till the bike kind of situation.
Speaker A:It was full gas and by halfway through the swim, you basically had a group of about nine athletes.
Speaker A:Interestingly enough, with Schomberg, you had Daniel Bacagaard, Ben Kanute, but you also had Christian Hogenhaug, who definitely played a huge role in the race.
Speaker A:And he was on the tail end of that front group.
Speaker A:Blumenfeld did not make the front group.
Speaker A:He was further back in the second pack with Gustav, with Magnus Ditlev, with Patrick Lange.
Speaker A:So it was just an interesting dynamic.
Speaker A:And those guys were about 90 seconds down from the front group coming out of the water.
Speaker B:And Christian was like, ah, this is the second pack.
Speaker B:Not a.
Speaker B:Not an ideal swim.
Speaker B:I'm like, he swam 49 something.
Speaker A:They were flying.
Speaker B:Unbelievable.
Speaker A:It looked.
Speaker A:It looked like a world like.
Speaker A:Like a world triathlon series race.
Speaker A:The way Schomburg was taking out that swim.
Speaker A:I was like, oh my God, they still have this bike and run.
Speaker B:I know that was what Sam did in Kona a couple years ago, last year.
Speaker B:It's ridiculous.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Anyways, okay.
Speaker A:And they get onto the bike.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Schomburg again thought he was like at an Olympic distance race or something because he just started sending it right from the start of the bike.
Speaker A:I think he built up something like a two minute gap or he had a pretty big gap before he ended up having a bit of a mechanical issue.
Speaker B:A little one.
Speaker B:A little one.
Speaker B:I thought it was interesting.
Speaker B:I was asleep.
Speaker A:I didn't see that.
Speaker A:This.
Speaker B:But I only saw the reels where basically his.
Speaker B:Some.
Speaker B:A bolt failed or came loose and his whole aero bar system just came off.
Speaker B:And then he stopped holding his arrow.
Speaker A:Bars as he's riding.
Speaker A:Yeah, he's just looking.
Speaker A:He looks so confused.
Speaker A:And I'm like, what is going on?
Speaker B:And then he stopped to fix it.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And he seemed to be able to repair it somehow.
Speaker B:And he got going again.
Speaker B:But then they came up to him and said, yeah, no, that's not gonna work.
Speaker A:He tried to get it repaired and then you see in the next like reel or whatever they put out, he's riding on his base bar and it.
Speaker A:But when the camera goes to him, there's just this piece of carbon sticking up.
Speaker A:And so that's why they pulled him off, because if he crashed somehow something happened like that thing's going through him.
Speaker A:It was the right call.
Speaker A:That was the first penalty type thing, I think, of the day, which there was a few.
Speaker A:And, yeah, that was the right call because it wasn't a great call.
Speaker B:It just goes to show, the technology has gotten to the point where people are doing so many things to their bikes that you kind of look at some of these setups and you're like, not only are you like, is that safe?
Speaker B:But it's like, is that structurally sound?
Speaker B:And we've seen this a couple of times right where this has happened, and it's.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And people are mounting these crazy 3D printed aero bars, custom aero bars, along now with all this hydration setup.
Speaker A:And there's no way the manufacturers who designed these bikes maybe a couple years ago thought about this when they did it.
Speaker A:So this next generation of bikes really needs to take that into account for sure.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But that was the beginning of the bike.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So let's go.
Speaker B:Let's take it on to the end.
Speaker A:So I feel like maybe even before that, the guy I talked about earlier, Christian Hogan Haug, he's a great cyclist, good athlete.
Speaker A:Had a really rough year last year.
Speaker A:Like, I just.
Speaker A:He just wasn't performing, but I don't know.
Speaker A:He was having a day in Frankfurt.
Speaker B:He was having a day.
Speaker B:And I'm like, who is this guy, Matt?
Speaker B:I never even heard of him.
Speaker A:And I actually think subscribes to my newsletter, so I think gave him a decent shout out there, but he just took off.
Speaker A:He was like, you know what?
Speaker A:I've got the legs today.
Speaker A:I'm gonna go.
Speaker A:And he attacked the front group and just steadily built up this lead.
Speaker A:It also helped, I think about.
Speaker A:I want to say, like halfway.
Speaker A:Just over halfway through the bike, you have the original front group, minus Schomburg, obviously, get caught by Christian and Gustav and Magnus Ditlev Lange had been dropped just before that.
Speaker A:So you had this kind of.
Speaker A:Of Hogan Haug off the front, doing his thing.
Speaker A:In his zone, you had this massive second group that if you saw in Texas, when you have big groups like that, it gets a little bit chaotic.
Speaker A:It's kind of like an ITU race where people get to the front, they didn't really want to work that much.
Speaker A:So then, you know, they sit up and then people behind sit up, and there's no rhythm.
Speaker A:So I think Hogan Haug had a little bit of a benefit with that as well.
Speaker A:And he built up.
Speaker A:I think it was eight.
Speaker A:Eight, almost nine minutes lead, like, against Blumenfeld and those Guys when they got into T2.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:He was off with a really impressive lead.
Speaker B:And I almost got the sense that Christian was like, okay, time to go to work.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:It was such an interesting.
Speaker A:I think Hogan Haug, not even long after he started his run, he got this penalty which when people are commenting and you read what actually happened, it sounded like he had a coach who was jogging beside him for 10 seconds.
Speaker A:I don't maybe screaming at him like, you're winning or something.
Speaker A:There was no like gel, there was no water.
Speaker A:It was just literally 10 seconds.
Speaker A:But this is the thing.
Speaker A:When you're in Germany, these guys, they don't mess around with the rules, the Germans.
Speaker A:And if they see a break in the rule, which technically I'm guessing that outside assistance is that kind of thing, you can't have a coach.
Speaker A:Yeah, pacing, even if it's not really pacing.
Speaker A:So they called it.
Speaker A:They're calling balls and strikes out there in Frankfurt.
Speaker A:And so he had a one minute penalty, which, like, okay, at least he's still, whatever, seven minutes up on those guys once they start running.
Speaker A:And it was actually good because he just.
Speaker A:Once he did that, he got back into a rhythm and was running really well.
Speaker A:After he had that, you had the big second group come in with Christian, with Gustav, with Casper Stornaez, who I haven't even mentioned, and Magnus Ditlev.
Speaker A:And actually Ditlev was the guy who really started going after it out of T2.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he was running really well until he got this crazy.
Speaker A:This was the penalty, the blow up penalty, the one that hit the algorithm.
Speaker A:Basically.
Speaker A:You know, whenever you get an athlete heated like that, swearing, you get that on camera.
Speaker A:You need that.
Speaker A:That's great.
Speaker A:For the engagement, for Iron Man.
Speaker A:Iron man wins the.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker B:It's great.
Speaker B:But you know what?
Speaker B:I refereed hockey for many years and the cardinal rule of being a referee is that the best referees are not noticed.
Speaker B:Referees should just be in the background making sure the game is being played fair and everything else.
Speaker B:But you should not be the story.
Speaker B:This referee was very much the story.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So what actually happened with this penalty?
Speaker B:Apparently Ditlov was going through an aid station and dropped a gel wrapper or a cup or something just past the garbage can.
Speaker A:Just cast a garbage can.
Speaker A:Just pass the like, sign that says end of littering.
Speaker A:And yeah, like I said, breaking the rule, even if it's.
Speaker B:That's like German engineering.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:There's a reason it's so precise.
Speaker A:There's no, no room for error.
Speaker A:So, yeah, this Official.
Speaker A:And the problem, it seems, with this official is they didn't actually show him the yellow card that he was supposed to get.
Speaker A:So he just was like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker B:You're disqualified.
Speaker B:He said, you're disqualified.
Speaker B:And Dittlev looks at him.
Speaker B:He's, no way.
Speaker B:I can't be disqualified.
Speaker B:I'm not disqualified.
Speaker B:He's.
Speaker B:And he just keeps running.
Speaker A:And that was after he showed him this red card and said he's disqualified because he didn't stop on the initial yellow card that he didn't even see.
Speaker A:And he was right to do that.
Speaker A:He was right to press on and continue.
Speaker A:Because I think these ones you can dispute a little bit.
Speaker B:I think, yeah, it ended up being erased.
Speaker B:The whole thing just went away.
Speaker A:But the unfortunate thing for DLEV is, like, he was on a heater when this was happening.
Speaker A:And I think he admitted after that whole situation took the wind out of his sails.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So who knows where he would have been at the end of the day.
Speaker A:I think Christian probably still would have taken him down.
Speaker A:But, yeah, he was on for a great day.
Speaker A:He was leading Christian and Casper, and then they both caught him not too long after that incident.
Speaker B:And you could speak to this, Matt, You've had issues like this in the past.
Speaker B:When you are clicking and you're on, everything's going your way.
Speaker B:That just gets you out of your rhythm.
Speaker B:It gets you out of your mindset, I would imagine.
Speaker B:And you start ruminating and can't help but be like, gosh darn it, let's face it, prob.
Speaker B:More colorful language than that.
Speaker A:And for someone like him, obviously he's trying to win the pro series or just have the best pro series result he can.
Speaker A:And he had a bit of a tough day in St. George, so he was coming in with maybe not as much momentum as he would have liked.
Speaker A:And obviously he was doing very well.
Speaker A:And then had this, like, potential dq, which I don't even know when he would have found out it was rescinded.
Speaker A:He would have just been running the whole time, maybe thinking he's going to be disqualified or something.
Speaker A:That's tough.
Speaker A:I would love to know when he found out or if he found out because there's obviously considerations around there.
Speaker B:But, yeah, tough one.
Speaker A:So I guess eventually he was caught by Christian and Casper Stornez, who were running together, I think about halfway through, maybe slightly more than halfway through the marathon.
Speaker A:Yeah, somewhere around there.
Speaker A:And they had all been chipping into Hogan Haug's lead, but he still had a solid Gap three to four minutes over those guys at halfway.
Speaker A:And then maybe shortly after they caught Ditlev, that's when Christian, he went full Blumenfeld and he.
Speaker B:Hogan.
Speaker B:I can't say his name.
Speaker B:Hogan.
Speaker A:Hogan Haug.
Speaker A:I'm probably pronouncing it wrong.
Speaker B:Yeah, he finished second, so he held on.
Speaker B:It's not like he wilted.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:And Blumenfeld caught him, I think, with 10k to go, and just went by him.
Speaker A:Nothing crazy at the end of the day.
Speaker A:Great day.
Speaker A:If your name Christian.
Speaker A:First and second.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And great day for the Norwegians because he didn't win.
Speaker B:He didn't win, but he did have a sensational run.
Speaker B:I believe he had the fastest run on the day.
Speaker B:And that was Patrick Long, the defending Ironman champion.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:And what.
Speaker A:I never even talked about this last week.
Speaker A:I only realized it after, like, obviously he's been.
Speaker A:We know he's been injured.
Speaker A:Like he's.
Speaker A:He always has tough days at Frankfurt anyways, but he was injured, so obviously wasn't running that much going to it.
Speaker A:So I almost thought, hey, maybe he's actually going to put himself in an even better position starting the bike.
Speaker A:And he actually did that in this race.
Speaker A:Like he was.
Speaker A:He's like relative, I think, maybe to what he usually does.
Speaker A:Like, he was in great position, which as we get closer to the World Championship, say he stays healthy.
Speaker A:That could actually be an advantage for him because he just starts the race closer to the front.
Speaker A:Yeah, injuries suck, but maybe he's leveled up his swim due to this.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:It was very entertaining and we will.
Speaker A:See plenty of action.
Speaker B:All plays out.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:We have another race in Germany this weekend, the ever popular Roth Challenge.
Speaker B:Roth.
Speaker B:We are not really going to preview the race that much.
Speaker B:We just wanted to talk briefly about another story that's impacting age groupers.
Speaker B:This was something that we had discussed previously.
Speaker B:A news story came out last summer where they did a anonymous survey.
Speaker B:You can never really know how to great.
Speaker B:The data is that you get out of those things.
Speaker B:But essentially they broke this news.
Speaker B:It was quite, quite a scandal at the time, suggesting that as many wasn't surprising, though it wasn't surprising to those of us who believe this already, but it was something along the lines of 11% of age groupers admitted to doping, which is just an insane number.
Speaker B:And so this year the Roth organizers have said we are going to see if that's true by clamping down and doing a lot more random drug testing of age groupers.
Speaker B:So I'm curious, Matt, your thoughts on that?
Speaker B:You think it's a good thing?
Speaker B:Think it's going to show anything?
Speaker A:I think it's a good thing.
Speaker A:I think they'll.
Speaker A:I would think they would have another couple hits, for sure.
Speaker A:Unless people just decided not to race because of having the potential to be drug tested.
Speaker A:I'm curious to see if any numbers come out of this, if they get any meaningful positive tests.
Speaker A:It's a great initiative and it's actually something I think down the line you're going to see more from like Ironman.
Speaker A:I really think we've seen now with this recent change to performance base qualification.
Speaker A:It's, I don't want to say the professionalization of age group racing, but it's just bringing them a little bit more in harmony.
Speaker A:And I think having this age group anti doping testing at the World Roth is like its own kind of world championship in a way, just because of the hype around it, just because of the race, I guess, the aura of it.
Speaker A:And I could see Iron man kind of bringing in a bit more of their own testing.
Speaker A:Just if they see something meaningful come out of this.
Speaker B:Yeah, it'll be interesting.
Speaker B:I don't know if they will publicize what their numbers, how many people they test or if they're going to keep that secret because they want to keep that in their back pocket as a threat.
Speaker B:And that would be good on their part, but I am certain that they will publicize any positives that.
Speaker B:That goes without space.
Speaker A:Yeah, I wonder, like, like I'm thinking about the possibility.
Speaker A:Say there's a lot of positive tests.
Speaker A:Is that good or is that bad for the support?
Speaker B:It depends what it is.
Speaker B:If it's a lot of positives and the drugs that they're testing or that they're getting positives back are things that you can see a legitimate purpose to.
Speaker B:Because the WADA list is very extensive and for people who are not doing this as their livelihoods, there's going to be things on there, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, you always wonder with these sporting organizations and stuff.
Speaker A:Like I back in the Tour de France have it.
Speaker A:Who knows what they're doing now, but when clearly there was a lot of doping going on, you would get like one or two a year in the Tour and they'd almost hang them up in the town square being like, yes, we're getting these dopers, but then how many?
Speaker A:Maybe you actually were more doing it.
Speaker A:It's like maybe a little conspiracy corner here.
Speaker A:But if there's a meaning, like a lot of people who Test positive.
Speaker A:Could that reflect poorly on the sport overall?
Speaker B:Of course it could.
Speaker B:There are a lot of ways that it could be spun.
Speaker B:But I think that if there were a lot of positives, I think you'd have a lot of people going, told you so you need to be testing more.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I don't.
Speaker B:I think it would provoke a lot of conversation.
Speaker B:I don't know that it would.
Speaker B:Would necessarily because we're talking about age groupers.
Speaker B:So I think instead it would have a lot of people all of a sudden looking at endurance athletes and going, what the hell are you guys doing?
Speaker B:Like, why are you doing this?
Speaker B:I don't think it would color triathlon necessarily, but I think what it would do is it would say, huh, I wonder what's going on in the marathons.
Speaker B:I wonder what's going on in other sport too.
Speaker B:Because these are, these are the same kind of people.
Speaker B:They're just.
Speaker B:They're not swim, bike, run.
Speaker B:They're still doing the same thing.
Speaker A:And you talked about, about in the past, like a few, like a past episodes, how you used to work in that laboratory, the testing lab for horses.
Speaker B:Horses, yeah.
Speaker A:So I think you talked about how is it urine testing is more effective?
Speaker B:Not that it was more effective, but just that you had a larger quantity so you could test.
Speaker A:So I'm curious.
Speaker A:I think one of the things to maybe understand or figure out is.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:If they're doing blood testing or if they're testing.
Speaker B:Oh, I can't.
Speaker B:No way.
Speaker B:They must be doing urine blood testing on that scale.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Blood testing is a big deal.
Speaker B:I would think they're doing urine testing.
Speaker A:So that.
Speaker A:And that seems to be like you talked about, that would probably potential to catch more things.
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker B:It's not that you could catch more things, it's just that.
Speaker B:It's just different way of specimen handling.
Speaker B:Listen, there's a lot less infectious disease risk to the people doing the testing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's less invasive because there's no needles involved.
Speaker B:I can't believe they're gonna.
Speaker B:They would do blood.
Speaker B:I would.
Speaker B:It's too much of a mess on many levels.
Speaker B:I think urine is the way to go for this.
Speaker A:I'm wondering too, with this publicizing, doing more testing, do you think athletes would pay more to have more robust, more rigorous drug testing?
Speaker B:It's an interesting question.
Speaker B:I have always thought yes, but when I've put the question out there, there's been a lot of people saying no, because the vast majority of people are not at the pointy end and just don't Care.
Speaker B:So you've got the people who are at the pointy end, which really only comprises 10 or 15% of athletes who are like, yes, test more because we want to know it's fair.
Speaker B:And then you got all these other people going, going, why?
Speaker B:Who cares?
Speaker B:Like, I don't, I don't care if someone's cheating.
Speaker B:I'm not in it to win it.
Speaker A:I'm just having a checking the box.
Speaker B:Getting the tattoo, etc.
Speaker B:But you could say, you could have people sign up and say, I am here to compete and therefore I will pay more for drug testing.
Speaker A:Yeah, one of the.
Speaker A:I had a chat with an athlete, like a new pro athlete.
Speaker A:This is back in like January and one thing they suggested that Ironman is specifically for Ironman that they do is they almost have, you know how they have the pro series for the pros, they have a potential like pro series for age groupers.
Speaker A:And this is where you could have that self selection of athletes who want to be tested and who want to qualify for worlds and whatnot and have a more competitive, I don't know, more professional experience.
Speaker A:So maybe that's something we could see further down the line where people would pay more to have those kind of services.
Speaker B:Do we get private porta Potties?
Speaker A:Yes, you do.
Speaker B:I'm in.
Speaker B:Count me in.
Speaker A:That was an interesting take, though.
Speaker A:I was like, ooh, that could.
Speaker A:For Ironman.
Speaker A:Obviously they could charge a lot more and that's just good margin, really.
Speaker A:So we'll see.
Speaker A:Age group pro series.
Speaker B:All right, stay tuned.
Speaker B:We'll see if it comes along.
Speaker B:All right, we've reached the end of another interesting and I think a great dialogue here on Tempo Talks.
Speaker B:Matt, thanks again for being here.
Speaker B:We would love it if you enjoyed the conversation, if you would leave us rating and a review wherever you download the content and of course, don't forget to share with a friend.
Speaker B:We'd love to hear your comments and feedback as well on the Talk Tempo Talks Facebook group.
Speaker B:Please head over there if you're not already a member.
Speaker B:Ask to join, answer the easy questions, we'll gain you admittance and we'll look forward to seeing you in the conversation there.
Speaker B:Matt, have a great week.
Speaker B:I'll look forward to catching up with you again next week and we can talk about everything that went on, all the fallout from today and of course enjoy your 4th of July lot.
Speaker A:Yes, you too.
Speaker A:Happy 4th and yeah, looking forward to chatting again.
Speaker B:All right, take care.
Speaker B:Bye now.
Speaker A:Bye.
Speaker C:Tempo Talks is a production of the triathlon performance hub along with the Tridoc podcast and is produced and edited by the amazing and talented Lauren Sankoff.
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