There are people that really enjoy training and racing but can’t afford the all inclusive price tag of Kona. If i got a slot, right now would be difficult to accept because of that price.
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You’re right. Too many moving parts to point out anything “unusual”. Even if everything else was as usual, it would still be one race, and, as has been discussed above: a single race can tell us (next to) nothing. Yet, I was surprised to see how the rolldown developed.
This is the deep question. I guess my worry is that the status of the IMWC as a championship will be devalued somehow. That it’ll not be the one race where only “the best” go. Is that a problem? And has it truly ever been anything other than a race for the subset of the fairly fast who also happen to have time and money to go to Hawaii in October?
It has always been both.
I suspect Ironman should be a little concerned. As pointed out earlier (in this thread or a similar one) non-US citizens are experiencing some reluctance to travel here. I can’t imagine that will change over the course of the next 36 months. That’s going to have an impact, just as Ironman has retooled their commitment to host the IM World Championship permanently in the USA.
Yes, it might roll and fill anyway, rejuvenating the lucky outsiders in the front of the race, but I’d still be concerned if I’m in IM’s shoes.
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Good to see such optimism. How about the next 7 years? Constitution change incoming, till death us do part.
Anyway, we’ve seen during the 3 split years that >1300 women and >2000 men want to race the self-declared long distance (IM) World Champs each year so, as said, the pier will be chocker in October 2026, for certain.
I don’t know what you mean by this: “rejuvenating the lucky outsiders in the front of the race”.
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Because of the new system? I seem to me that the last person to accept a roll down slot will now be as or more worthy of the slot compared to the old system.
People near the front of their race who don’t qualify, but now do of it rolls deeper than expected will be enthused. That’s not bad.
But it’s still something I think IM should be concerned of if their premium, ultra rare product isn’t so special that it rolls super deep.
It might be out of their control - economy, visa/travel concerns, Hawaii cost & stigma. But either way, that’s not a +1 in the strength column of their swot right?
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Not at all. The new system clearly rewards performance more than luck. Absolutely agree. Still, luck isn’t totally eliminated as a factor. One AG winner had an age graded rank of 1000+. By my standards, that’s not in the front. Not even in a big race of 2000+.
My concern comes from the observation (of a single race with several unusual circumstances, admittedly) that
- Close to 3 out of 4 age group winners cannot or will not go to the IMWC.
- More than 2 out of 3 who were called in the entire rolldown cannot or will not go to the IMWC.
We can be sure that none of them were already qualified, as this was the first weekend of the new cycle.
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Just out of curiosity, I looked up some names on the top 3 M40.
#1 Dennis Steffensen has a long history and despite qualifying multiple times in the past hasn’t raced Kona since 2013.
#2 has only raced Hamburg 2x and Copenhagen.
#3 Tobias Dressel has a decade of history and also never raced Kona.
What’s interesting is despite them all being top level EU M40 athletes, who have raced multiple Ironmans, two of them for a decade or more, they also haven’t been bothered to race the WC Nice, in their own backyard, so to speak. (Unless one or more of them will be there this year)
That’s a little intriguing to me.
I don’t remember who said that the coefficients for high Ag were a bit too “nice”, but when I look at the results of AG 60 in Thun this weekend, they were 43 at the start, so with the old system there would have only been 1 slot, and there, they are 7 in the 40!! Ok, they are strong, but still it’s a lot
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I was also quite surprised seeing so many higher Age Groupers in Thun. The theory would have been that harder races would see more younger Age Groupers on top. Back to the drawing board.
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Here’s the distribution of slots after 4 races assuming everyone who gets offered a slot takes one. Women get 29.4% of the 160 slots distributed so far. Curious to hear how far the rolldowns came in Tallin and Thun.
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Why only 5 AG 60 in Thoune?
Where did you find the results for Thun? I replaced Kalmar with Tallinn, et lá voila, but different permutations of Thun & Switzerland got me nothing.
I got it from the IM app and it only shows the first 250 (age grade corrected) finishers. Here’s the link: https://static.rtrt.me/events/irm-switzerland-2025/info_section/1756077766_ironman-switzerland-thun-age-graded-overall-table_2025-08-24-232312_u5udkajl.pdf
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Only 5? I think it’s quite a number! In the age grade corrected results the 5th place M60-64 finishes 20th overall with a time of 10:45:27 (corrected 8:53:16). And I’m pretty sure the number 6 (38th overall) and 7 (40th) will get their slot during rolldown.
I understood that the rolldown in Thun wasn’t very deep. The last slot was taken by the #58 on the corrected results list.
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You should post this chart over in this thread for posterity.IRONMAN Announces Performance-Based Qualifying for Kona and 70.3 World Championship - #537 by brendank13
I would say those people might have a life and do no more than 1 ironman a year but then focus on it the last 3 month but then let go for a while
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Thank you, this is super interesting to look at. Wonder what changes we will after this first trial run. It clearly has some bias.