There’s been suggestions of them offering slots to AWS gold athletes to bump the field up. For Nice this year.
40 for 2026.
And you have the allocation accurate.
Actual numbers depend on uptake by #1 or failing them podia but that should be 10 women. to which add between 1 and 3 more on roll down, as I read it.
| Alloc | Rank | Name | AG | In AG | Actual | Graded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 65 | Lisa Andersson | F18-24 | 1 | 10:17:04 | 08:48:38 |
| 2 | 8 | Linda Brännlund | F25-29 | 1 | 09:15:54 | 08:18:09 |
| 3 | 75 | Louise Schnoor Hansen | F30-34 | 1 | 09:52:47 | 08:52:09 |
| 4 | 85 | Caroline Hofer | F35-39 | 1 | 10:02:51 | 08:54:29 |
| 5 | 84 | Emma Aberg | F40-44 | 1 | 10:13:48 | 08:54:26 |
| 6 | 20 | Marta Sroka | F45-49 | 1 | 10:01:30 | 08:31:20 |
| 7 | 28 | Ines Sandbote | F50-54 | 1 | 10:32:58 | 08:34:17 |
| 8 | 4 | Viktoria Johnsson | F55-59 | 1 | 10:32:55 | 08:12:17 |
| 9 | 105 | Cicilia Metz | F60-64 | 1 | 12:29:12 | 09:00:46 |
| 10 | 95 | Hanne Jørgensen | F65-69 | 1 | 13:08:20 | 08:58:17 |
| 24 | 9 | Marian Van Hilst | F55-59 | 2 | 10:43:17 | 08:20:21 |
| 45 | Emma Nilsson | F25-29 | 2 | 09:41:49 | 08:41:22 | |
| 47 | Olivia Lind | F25-29 | 3 | 09:42:06 | 08:41:37 | |
| 48 | Grit Baedeker | F55-59 | 3 | 11:11:19 | 08:42:09 |
10 men in the M5054 in the top 40. looks to be leaning bias or just a lot of top performers.
I’m sure their graded performance is great, I’m questioning the grading method. Sending 10 men to Kona, I’m assuming they all take the slots for sake of the discussion, in 50-54 in a single race is just too much. The old system had it flaws and tended to be a bit unfair to smaller but very competitive AG’s but in general Kona had what we all accepted as the “best”. I’m inclined to think the new system MAY create more problems than it solves. Tomorrow we will see the Copenhagen graded results.
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Size of field (finishers):
2005 (385 women 19%, 1620 men 81%
| AG | Number |
|---|---|
| F18-24 | 25 |
| F25-29 | 54 |
| F30-34 | 64 |
| F35-39 | 49 |
| F40-44 | 48 |
| F45-49 | 52 |
| F50-54 | 52 |
| F55-59 | 28 |
| F60-64 | 8 |
| F65-69 | 5 |
| M18-24 | 150 |
| M25-29 | 193 |
| M30-34 | 220 |
| M35-39 | 203 |
| M40-44 | 215 |
| M45-49 | 233 |
| M50-54 | 215 |
| M55-59 | 121 |
| M60-64 | 48 |
| M65-69 | 17 |
| M70-74 | 4 |
| M75-79 | 1 |
Seems like the first data graphs were correct: Those fast, pancake flat courses favor older age groupers massively. Will be interesting to see the results on tougher courses, e.g Wales.
Why not? If the point is to reward age/gender graded athletic performance, and you have some variation in competitiveness, then you’re going to see swings in who gets the slots. This will happen with any age/gender graded system.
We already know that on the women’s side, it’s much more competitive in NA vs EU, so you’re going to see more women pick up slots in NA.
So what if women get more slots in NA? If that’s where the top women are, then so be it.
It will take a few races (a year?) before we see who’s at Kona and what’s just a statistical fluke for a particular race. And as always, if the coefficients benefit one group on one type of course (older folks on flat courses), then pick races which benefit you - just as we do anyway for course conditions
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Bottom line, it’s bad for business. Yes this system has the potential to reward high performances better, but in general over the past few decades it’s been widely accepted qualifying was difficult and the field at Kona was highly competitive. It already had a solid reputation. Qualifying was a simple proposition. I readily acknowledge where it was imperfect but it was straightforward. If, and obviously this is a big if, we get races with these kind of disparities it may depress the number of people chasing slots. Looking at these results, if you were a woman or even man in one of the severely underserved AG’s, it must be frustrating. In F35-39 and 40-44 got one slot each and there were almost 50 women in each AG. It’s irrelevant if at another race the script is flipped, for these paying customers on this day, they got dealt a deck of cards they could never anticipate. That’s where some semblance of consistency across all races needs to be considered. And from a reputation standpoint I don’t think this is making people look at Kona qualifying in a different light.
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How do you know it is bad for business?
In the old system there were “near miss people” literally seconds out of a slot who went home with nothing, whereas in other age groups there could have been a massive spread in time between the winner and those who got slots at the back of the podium. The near miss people went home dissappointed. Now they enter the performance pool and get a slot.
But regardless in this race, some people have near misses but the same near miss performance gets them a slot in another race.
I think what we will see is more people stay engaged overall because they have a chance of a performance based slot.
Also all your conclusions are based on outright calculations. That’s not what matters. What matters is the type of rolldown relative to the outright calculation and who actually takes the slots. I have a friend who skipped rolldown at Muskoka who finished 5th in his age group. Under the old system he had no chance for a slot because he talked to three of us and we all wanted slots, so he left. Then his named got called in the performance based pool and he was bummed out he left, and now he’s signing up for two races next spring for another shot (which he should get by then)
If, still an open question, we continue to get a disproportionate number of older men and women receiving an abundance of slots relative to the younger ones, that’s not a good growth model for Ironman if they want Kona to be aspirational and drive registrations. Perhaps we won’t, but we had a great analysis in the thread discussing this that seems to suggest the system will be biased in this respect. There were almost 100 women at this race in particular you linked too and they got 2 slots. I didn’t audit other AG’s but that’s pretty stark compared to the bounty in the older men’s AG.
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Great, more 60-64 men! 
I’m kidding but in the old system your AG probably would have had 3 slots, now it has 4.
In the old system in a 70.3 there would be one slot typically, maybe two at most, It’s not like there were no 18-39’s in the performance pool ahead of my friend. They also skipped rolldown. They may be back now they know how it works.
The really fast 18-39 year olds are still finishing high up in the performance adjusted pool anyway (In Kalmar I saw 6 M30-34 and 4 M35-39 in the top 50, but M25-29 had one but two more in the top 60)…top 60 may be enough to get slot anyway, but these age groups may have only gotten 2-3 slots in the old system, now they will likely send 10 people in the M30-39 to Kona
But it’s a limited resource. So 10 in M30-39, 2 in F35-44. And sure, that’s 20% but one of the goals of this new system was to increase female participation. That math is t going to cut it. Yes, for this event and we’ll see how it develops
Not sure what you are talking about. There will be around 13-14 women going to Kona out of 40 slots. That’s 30-35% of the slots, and scanning the results there will be around that many men 18-39 going too. So not sure what the problem is.
I missed where it was stated that increase female slots was a goal of this new system. I thought they said the intent was to ensure the pointy end made it in regardless of gender.
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Scott said he wants to see women in Kona to represent 30-40% of the field.
I thought he said that outside of the context of the new system, but maybe there was somewhere the 2 were connected that I missed. I’ve only heard him say this system was put in place to elevate the competition in Kona to be ‘World Championship’ levels. I have issues with the system (ie Kona isn’t just a World Chanpionship and is also a Mecca of the sport that should have a pathway for the sub elite athlete to experience) but the execution of the system seems to be working as expected so far. Slight increase in women’s slots and events that have different mixes of slot allocation due to difference is AG quality of field and how those fields interact with the course.
One begets the other. They are connected.
They can be for sure. But his goal of growing women’s participation isn’t predicated on it happening this year with the new system. It’s increase the % so far and likely will continue to, but I don’t think he expected or wanted it to deliver it all through the new system alone.
For sure but I think trying to make Ironman more appealing to women via Kona slots is a fools errand. He needs to address the “why” women aren’t t as interested in full distance racing. If he can solve that then he has a shot of realizing the more equal participation he seeks
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