Is Ironman compition a joke? Wesfly qualified for the world championship in his first try

Ironman is dominated by men. They're making an honest effort to increase female participation and equal the number of male & female qualifiers for Kona. Arizona had an increased number of female slots. Most races still just allocate based on sign ups so there are very few female slots which maybe means having to win your age group for a woman versus finishing 6th in the 40-44 male age group. It's a good thing. That's why I prefer something like the BQ. A lot of good athletes didn't KQ in AZ and could have at a different race.

Qualifying for Kona is still really, really hard. For most it will take 15-20+ hours/week of training.

It's kind of like Club XC (minus having to qualify for it). Amateurs know that it's a race everyone flocks to but it's super competitive. Think about how good the athletes are who are in the top-10 at club XC. It's hard to finish top-10 in your age group at triathlon nationals. I think a lot of people would be surprised at how deep some of the age groups go.

If you're a good runner and jump into a tri you might do really well -- maybe even win a small event. But look at your score rating afterwards and then look at some of the more competitive races.

+1 I did AG nats & worlds & it was so obvious at those events. There were guys who practically glowed in the dark

https://www.ironman.com/im-waco

Results are at the bottom of the above link.

It was a solid result for his first Ironman, but this was a 1 in 100 race where a huge chunk of the field who got to the finish line qualified…especially those in non-competitive age groups like 18-24. Look at results of other Ironmans, including Kona, to get a sense of what a time of 12:30 means.

I have no desire to minimize his accomplishment — he persevered through truly brutal (hot) conditions. But to set the record straight, it is typically very difficult for young/middle aged males to qualify for Kona. It’s generally much harder to qualify for Kona than Boston. Nowadays it typically requires one to go around 9 flat and many literally run a BQ time for their Ironman run. Athletes work years to pull it off. Waco was a strange race where nobody showed up and slots rolled down.

Ok, I will go there. 6:50 bike and 4:20 marathon is not good. Even for the hottest Ironman you can imagine. It is similar to doing well in an Ultramarathon when the field is not competitive. This is 3 hours slower than a typical qualifying time.

No "good" female athletes didn't KQ at AZ unless they had an absolute and total blow up. Look at how far down slots rolled with the additional entries. It's insulting to anyone who's qualified in the past. 100 extra slots is insanity. Same as when they did it with 150 total slots at Ironman Tulsa in 2021 - 9% of the finishers qualified? Middle aged guys going 11-hours and getting slots? ridiculous.

Doing a ratio of Smulders' time v. the winning time, and assuming the latter is the rough equivalent of a 2:18 marathon performance level, I get his performance as roughly equivalent to a 3:00 marathon. About what I would expect since it is obvious he didn't train seriously for it.

Lots of posters on this thread are envious. Smulders is a sub-4 miler, and can easily drop a sub 2 800 on his worst day. He recently notched a 100-miler, and has completed more than a few marathons. A reasonably good athlete, I’d say (especially if “reasonably” means “better than 99+% of all runners ever”). Nice effort on his part, and he will only get stronger if he hangs in there.

I mean, go off King.

IM recognized a problem & this was their solution. Is it perfect? No. But it used to be the case that very good 2nd or 3rd AG finishes didn't qualify a woman for Kona. & this is what still happens at races without the increased slots. This isn't some hardship for men. The qualification is still the same for us. This is more like how people say the Boston AG times aren't equivalent for men & women. That's not the goal. The goal is to get the same number of qualifiers. The standards will maybe tighten up in the future and that might be because of the investment the race has made in having equal field sizes now.

& none of what I've written on this thread is to knock the Wesfly guy. I'm glad he had a good experience, found it challenging, gutted it out, & even wants to go pro. It's just that there's a world of difference between an 85, a 100, and a 106 (pro mark) score rating. The problem I see isn't with prioritizing women. It's that faster races up front offer the same number of Kona slots as slower races. An 85 wouldn't get you close at IM AZ.

Qualifying for the world championships should not be a thing for “decent” athletes though. He’s nowhere near worlds in track, for him to qualify in another sport on his first attempt either means he is a PHENOMENAL talent at biking and/or swimming, or the competition is weak. I’m leaning towards the latter.

He's not qualifying as a pro though. Qualifying for Kona an an age grouper is a little more difficult than qualifying for Boston. & it's been said plenty of times that you don't usually come close to qualifying with his time/score rating.

Pro qualification for Kona is incredibly difficult. It's usually just one or two slots so you have to win or come close to the win in a pro field.

It seems to me that professional sport is a very difficult event in itself. and if you also get a qualification, then it deserves a lot of praise

Those are not the two possibilities. I encourage you to look at what it means to qualify for Kona as an amateur triathlete versus pro triathlete and to look at his results at Waco and compare it to other races to empirically understand how he compares to other amateur triathletes and to pro triathletes. He’s in the top 20-30% of amateurs his age, which is not bad for a first Ironman, but that’s a few hours behind a typical pro triathlete and at least a couple of hours behind what it typically takes to qualify for Kona as an amateur. Waco was a weird race with a small field of slower amateurs. But there were still a substantial number of Kona slots.

Some of your confusion, I think, relates to the amateur/pro designation. At major triathlons, there is a pro field and an amateur field. To earn a pro card/elite license, you have to perform at a certain level (think top 1% — most pros can put out 340-360+ watts on a bike for an hour, break 5 in the 500 free, and run 65-70 in a half marathon). Then you can race in the pro field. There were no pros at Waco as there was no pro field. If there was, you’d have a bunch of guys go around 8 flat, or even breaking 8 hours.

It is insanely difficult to qualify for Kona as a pro. Only 40 pro men earn the right to do so at Kona. Meanwhile, 2,000 amateur men qualify. You typically have to be in the top 1-5% of your AG to qualify for Kona as an amateur. The real world championship is the pro race at Kona. Think of those 40 athletes as the counterpart to the runners who qualify for the track world championships.

Why should there be the same number of qualifiers when there aren't the same number of athletes at the qualifying races? The reason why there are fewer normal slots for women is because fewer women sign up, not because there are inherently fewer slots. The women who qualify are proportionally just as fast as the men who qualify. It's very rare that a truly exceptional and deserving athlete doesn't qualify.

Ironman age groupers are mostly middle aged guys that make well over six figures and searching for some meaning in their lives (I know because I am one of them). The 18-24 age group can be less competitive than the 60-64 tbh because young people that arent on a professional track usually have no interest or not enough funds to compete.

I think its cool that hes branching out into ultra events, but it is definitely a bit misleading and to qualify in a more competitive age group you would need to cut 3 hours off that time.

Because instead of accepting participation numbers they want to change participation numbers. Hopefully equal slots will lead to more women competing. & you're dead wrong about deserving athletes not being able to qualify. Before this, most women had to win their age group. Some very strong performances were being left out so we could take the 12th M40-44 competitor. This is their solution and, again, the male qualification process remains unchanged so I really don't see why you have a problem with prioritizing women. No male qualifying spots were lost.

I think this is the most interesting question.

Men have lost nothing. Not one single slot. If anything, like the women, they have gained "their own day."

So, if they have lost nothing, why are some men upset/bothered/whatever about women potentially gaining something? Ironman is perfectly free to do what it feels necessary to fill the slots in the women's race.

The triathlon itself was created for mediocre runners, who simply could not compete with the best.