Yup I have said this for years but that isn’t going to happen.
but you make a good point as the swim group grows it’s harder to drop the weaker swimmers off the back right. so… as that swim group has grown the front bike pack has… say it with me , grown . Marbella 70.3 as the last example. without the hill at 10 kms how long would the 30-50 men have stayed together.
Course design should also be a factor in this decision. If WC courses are supposedly where the issues with 12m are (due to density of competition), but at the same these courses have a giant hill that breaks up the group, then is there really an issue?
We shouldn’t be having this discussion as a hypothetical “what it the WC was pan flat?” it needs to take into account actual course conditions.
And as far as I’m concerned the last few years have delivered some awesome racing both at the WC and in the pro series. So what’s the problem that needs fixing again?
lol always cracks me up when people advocate for a longer draft zone as showing who the better all round athlete is, when the cycling part of these races is usually at least 50% of the whole time in any given race.
not sure how 20m can be enforced at a 70.3 where there is swim depth, look at the mess in the first 20k at Marbella this year with 36 men out of the water within a minute.
Reminds me of part of the reason Olympic distance racing went draft legal in the mid 1990s (the swim depth, and that Les McDonald wanted a better ‘for TV’ product)
that is the issue everything has a price. at the same time now there is race ranger and shaming people publicly seems to work. and of course pro tri news is mostly lobbying for Lionel , Magnus , kat , Trevor , and none of them is a front pack swimmer so there has some agenda here.
clearly shown with lionels zipp issue and in Hayden wilds case the rules are the rules , in lionels case the rules are stupid ( yes they are extremly stupid but still the rules are the rules) ie they are just as inconsistent as world tri.
Eh tbf they did say that the shoe prototype eligibility rules are dumb, especially sine the shoes were legal while prototypes. The difference there is Hayden was explicitly told not to use them but Asics, ignored the communication, then when told at the race indicated that he’s take them of to try to hide it. Same with the bottle rules when they came out, which PTN said was silly, but again everyone else adjusted setups to comply while Hayden circumvented the rules taking the bottle off the downtube to mount illegally.
Difference with Lionel is that he wasn’t getting an advantage from having his zipper undone running 100m down the finisher chute, whereas Hayden got theoretically some advantage with an illegal bottle placement or using shoes before their approved for competition date. Then when Lionel was told at the race, unlike Hayden he recognized that per the letter of the law, he was wrong and could fairly be DQed.
That’s baloney, both guys were basically technicalities that did not give either an advantage. Hayden wore shoes he had already worn, but technically the new ones exactly the same were days from approval. IF you want to ticky tack Lionels faux pas, it cooled him down for the finishing 100 meters. Both are silly to argue advantage, but yes technical infringements that are also silly. And both handled in the manner they deserved too, and shone a light on some of the absurdity of penalties for such infractions…
I hate to be pedantic, but if the zipper down isn’t an advantage, why does he pull the zipper down? Presumably, if all else were equal, he’d want the zipper up because it shows off his sponsors better, but he and others do pull the zipper down.
Obviously we can quibble about the technicalities of the last 100m but clearly he’s doing it for a reason (cooling, breathing room, etc.), if only for placebo benefit.
I agree that they’re silly penalties that don’t affect the outcome- but you have to admit there’s a difference between being explicitly told (which other athletes confirm) by the sponsor NOT to wear the product, then proceed to do so anyways then try to cover it up. Those are world athletics stupid eligibility rules, not even T100 or World Tri or Ironman. Vs forgetting to do up your zipper after 3.5 hours of pushing to the limit in a tight battle for the podium, it’s obvious someone might forget that. So I don’t think PTN is being biased, almost the whole triathlon world was much harder on Hayden for the shoe-gate and many thought a DQ was warranted.
I’m not a person to advocate handing out penalties, I do want the rules enforced uniformly and as close to the letter of the law as possible for consistency and fairness. What I’m advocating for is addressing where the rules don’t make sense so that there’s no grey area, zipper down/imaginary center line bs. I would love for world athletics to get rid of their prototype shoes rules as well, and just allow any shoe meeting the technical requirements (stack height, etc) to be raced at any time. Fat chance of that happening sadly, though I do think it’s a good idea for triathlon to have consistent shoe rules with running
My argument with you was that you said it was an advantage, not that just some rule was broken. Same exact shoes worn, just one day legal, next day not, and then legal again. What exact advantage did he get by wearing the same shoe, just not the prototype version?
And your assessment of his knowledge and state of mind is just that, your guess. He has said that he didn’t read those emails about the shoe from his sponsor, and just thought since same shoe as before, must be ok..So yes that is on him, but to just make up that be blatantly disregarded it, well that’s facts not in evidence..
Well not reading an email from your sponsor to not use a product is by definition blatantly disregarding the rules…
I did say a potential advantage insofar as the shoes were technically not legal for that specific race, and there’s no guarantee that shoe was actually faster. But any other ascis athletes (excluding Sam Long who also didn’t seem to read that email) were not wearing that shoe, and didn’t have the same opportunity for the potential gain. Now would these shoes vs Asics other racers really be much difference? Unlikely for the difference between 1st and 2nd, but let’s not forget that Casper also ran these shoes for his 2:29 in Nice.