Should drafting be banned in ITU triathlon races?

While I do find that argument compelling, would you define the best runner as the guy who can run the fastest alone? I think there is more involved than just pure speed. One thing that would make ITU tris really interesting is team championships. If you could have a team work together, people would not cluster. In an individual event, you can take the lead, but you just burn yourself out. Teams would make the bike REALLY interesting (which it is not now).

What about drafting in the swim?

Part of "being the best" is using tactics that allow you to win. If you missed out on a Gold medal due to drafting, you were not "the strongest triathlete out there." You might be the best physically, but someone employed a strategy that allowed them to beat you. And strategy is part of the sport.

The high school kid who goes out in 55 flat en route to a 2:10 800m is "working so hard all race," too. In fact, he's working a heck of a lot harder than anyone else. But he's working hard to the detriment of his own performance. Working the hardest doesn't mean you deserve to win. Working the smartest is more admirable.

I thought in the swim you try and draft off the stronger swimmers.

I don't watch triathlons, much, so I'm wondering if the strategy is interesting or is it simply who can make up the time they lost on the swim to catch the lead group? Do small groups work together to make it harder for better runners/bikers to catch up?

Having no draft rules seems one step towards making the sport just a solo time trial which would definitely be boring.

dingle wrote:

I don't watch triathlons, much, so I'm wondering if the strategy is interesting or is it simply who can make up the time they lost on the swim to catch the lead group? Do small groups work together to make it harder for better runners/bikers to catch up?

Having no draft rules seems one step towards making the sport just a solo time trial which would definitely be boring.

Triathlons started out as draft free events. (Ironman and most domestic US races are draft free). I think one reason races in the US are draft free is a fear of liability.

dingle wrote:

I don't watch triathlons, much, so I'm wondering if the strategy is interesting or is it simply who can make up the time they lost on the swim to catch the lead group? Do small groups work together to make it harder for better runners/bikers to catch up?

Having no draft rules seems one step towards making the sport just a solo time trial which would definitely be boring.

International races tend to go like this:

1) They come out of the swim in a long line.

2) They ride around the bike in a pack (probably 50%-90% of the entire field.

3) They run and the strongest runner (Brownlee/Gomez/Jenkins,etc) wins.

I understand why the ITU went to draft legal racing at the pro level (tv coverage, too hard to police drafting on the bike, etc), but I find the ITU circuit much less compelling to watch than non-draft-legal racing, like at Ironman. It's not that draft legal racing doesn't bring out great athletes and today there are a lot of top men and women who have the ability to win, it's that the format seems to lead to a predictable race situation more often than not. A few racers get out in front on the swim. They try to get away on the bike but eventually get reeled in by the pack. Then 15-20-30 people come off the bike together to race a 10k.

Back when Olympic Distance pro racing was non-draft-legal I found the strategy much more interesting. Even if the swim went the same way most swims go today, you then had cyclists who made bold moves to utilized their Time Trial skills. To see Mike Pigg or Spencer Smith or Jurgen Zach blasting their way through the field with abandon must have given their competitors fits; "how much time is this guy going to gain on me before we get off the bike?". "Can I give up 90 seconds or 2 minutes and make it up on the run?" Now, if that kind of rider comes along you just grab onto their wheel, or find a couple riders to work with to chase them down and at least minimize the gains. I'm much more a fan of the mano a mano style for this sport.

To me the argument in favor of draft-legal being better for spectators is ridiculous. Do any pro triathlons outside the Olympics draw crowds that can compete with any of the major or even semi-major spectator sports? I watch these races on Canadian tv or Universal Sports fairly regularly and it's rare that I see a race with an impressive spectator turnout.

Drafting in the cycling element should absolutely be abolished. This sport is clunky - it has so many moving parts - and it's probably very difficult to officiate. That said, simplifying the officiating of the sport by allowing cyclists to draft unnaturally affects the outcome of the race (how can you not reward pacesetters?!) and places way too much emphasis on the run.

If you want to invent an unnatural sport then figure out a way to officiate it in its purest possible form. How? I don't know, but there may be a technology-based solution: e.g. Put proximity sensors in the bikes and establish thresholds for how long cyclists can be near one another.

Since triathlon tends to be adopted by CEO-types (with a long-standing history of loose morals) they would probably just purchase some sort of "jamming" technology anyway.

Who knows? Pack cycling makes triathlon a joke.

If the sport wants a swimmer to be able to break away to steal a win, the swim segment needs to be equal to the other segments time-wise. What are teh segment times now, approx? 17 for the 1500 S, bit under an hour for the 40k B and right around 30 for the 10k R? Double the swim (for the pros) and see if a bad ass swimmer can make a break and hold it. Or reduce the bike to 30k and see what happens. Anyway, presently, the swim is basically the pros' warm-up to a group ride then a 10k race.

time equality wrote:

If the sport wants a swimmer to be able to break away to steal a win, the swim segment needs to be equal to the other segments time-wise. What are teh segment times now, approx? 17 for the 1500 S, bit under an hour for the 40k B and right around 30 for the 10k R? Double the swim (for the pros) and see if a bad ass swimmer can make a break and hold it. Or reduce the bike to 30k and see what happens. Anyway, presently, the swim is basically the pros' warm-up to a group ride then a 10k race.

I'm no triathlon pro, but wouldn't doubling the swim increase the dangers of the race? Shortening the bike would probably make more sense.

Are time trial bikes legal in ICU draft legal races?

ZealotAssasin wrote:

I'm no triathlon pro, but wouldn't doubling the swim increase the dangers of the race? Shortening the bike would probably make more sense.

Bah, we aren't talking about Ironman distances here. Might increase it marginally for recreational triathletes but certainly not for the pros.

Logistics and possible safety issues aside, if the goal is to break up the pack in a pro tri race so everyone is not together at the start of the run, how about changing the order: like swim-run-bike or bike-swim-run? As it is now, they might as well go straight to the run, since they all seem to get off the bike together, which minimizes the importance of the bike.

Yeah if drafting were allowed the triathlon would become much more like a team sport like cycling.

for instance a person would be at a huge advantage to win a triathlon if he had a buddy that did the swim portion of the race and then gave it all he had to help draft with his friend through the biking section. then the buddy could drop out or run the run slower and the other guy would be a lot less tired from the drafting.

saying wrote:

Are time trial bikes legal in ICU draft legal races?

I believe tri aerobars (for draft legal races) are short than time-trial aerobars. Thus offering a bit more control.

Yes, proximity sensors and camera feed back to officials HQ that activate small parachutes that pop out from the bike seats if a triathlete spends too much time drafting. Parachutes stay activated for the given period of penalty, thereby slowing the violator down, and causing him/her to use the extra energy previously saved by drafting in the first place.

Done. Next problem. I am a technologu wiz.

think of it this way... wrote:

One thing that would make ITU tris really interesting is team championships. If you could have a team work together, people would not cluster. In an individual event, you can take the lead, but you just burn yourself out. Teams would make the bike REALLY interesting (which it is not now).

This makes sense to me. Would you hold a separate team event from the individual championships?

How would it be determined who wins? Like cross country where the team placings are added up? Or is when the first person on the team crosses the line?

fdfddf wrote:

Yeah if drafting were allowed the triathlon would become much more like a team sport like cycling.

for instance a person would be at a huge advantage to win a triathlon if he had a buddy that did the swim portion of the race and then gave it all he had to help draft with his friend through the biking section. then the buddy could drop out or run the run slower and the other guy would be a lot less tired from the drafting.

Drafting is allowed. That's the point of the thread.

It already happens, expect to see it happen again an the Olympics.

You don't think Jonny Brownlee riding on the front is simply because he likes being at the front, do you? It's because big brother is the best runner and his job is to keep things together until then.

It's not a team competition, but favours are called in.