#149: Checking in on the new qualification system
And I'm doing a sprint tri. Apparently.
issue #149: Aug. 20, 2025
OK, it is decided, starting next week this newsletter will hit your inbox early Thursday mornings instead of Wednesday afternoons. This is largely because our Feist women’s sports podcast and newsletter are shifting to Wednesday mornings, and so my week has to get rearranged.
I’m also doing a sprint triathlon this Sunday! Surprise! I’m not even back up to running 5K without walk breaks (and even that is a stretch) and I’m not bringing a bike (I just rented a random one and am gonna show up and roll it straight into transition), so there’s a good chance this race will take me 30 minutes longer than the last time I did a sprint tri. Which is a lot longer.
It’s because I’m flying out to the Chicago Triathlon early Saturday for a quick 36 hours to check out the Supertri race and to see how Supertri’s mass participation expansion is going. I last did the Chicago Triathlon when I was coming up in the sport (like 15 years ago) and it was then the largest Olympic-distance race in the world. So very curious to see how it is now. And also super excited to spend my weekend not catching up on sleep 🤦♀️
- Kelly
The final & the first of Kona
This past weekend was the final qualifying races for Men’s Nice & Women’s Kona: Here are the full list of qualifiers men & women. (Gotta love Zach Cooper grabbing the very very last World Champs’ spot when Jesper Svensson declined in Copenhagen.) And the fields are quite stacked, as they tend to be. I will say it’s almost as if when you add more spots to a field, more people make the race more exciting and deeper and wilder. Weird.
I’m sure we’ll have much much more to say in the previews in the lead-up, but, in short:
WOMEN: Kat Matthews is certainly tired of being second at World Champs and aims to rectify that. Laura Philipp is defending champ (and even if we say Kona isn’t as much her course, she’s still been on the podium multiple times). Lucy Charles-Barclay is clearly back on form; is it 2023 Kona form? Chelsea Sodaro validated in a tough day at Kalmar, but I would never doubt that she’ll be ready come Oct. 11. Taylor Knibb has made it clear this is a focus (and watch out for a focused Taylor). Solveig Løvseth is Kona debuting and has only done two Ironmans but in both of them she ran 2:46, so. Also debuting: Julie Derron (interesting!), Holly Lawrence, Tamara Jewett (and 15 other women).
MEN: Patrick Lange has won three of the six World Championships he’s finished, which gives him a 50% win rate. Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden have each only won one, but I’d say Gustav is in much better form than the DNF in Kona last year and Blummenfelt seems to have re-rallied after whatever went south(ish) post-Paris last summer (ie. there was no Olympics this summer, so). Sam Laidlow has won one too — and we know he comes to perform when the performing is in France. Rudy Von Berg hasn’t won yet, but has been oh so close and I like his odds better in Nice (where he grew up) than in Hawaii. Magnus Ditlev would also like to move up a spot or two, and will probably have some weird bike tricks up his sleeve to do it. Marten Van Riel is injured but don’t cross him off your ‘debuts to watch’ list yet. Also debuting: Jason West. Not debuting: Leon Chevalier.
It was also the first weekend of races with the new age-graded ranking qualification system for 2026 Kona: You can see the age-graded ranked list for IM Copenhagen here and for IM Kalmar here.
By my math — if you go through and allocate slots to all the AG winners, and then hand out the rest of the “performance” spots going down the age-graded list (with no rolldowns assumed, partially because it’s not possible for me to know if/who rolled down and partially because as the first 2026 qualifying races it’s unlikely there was much rolldown) — here’s what you get:
Kalmar: Qualifying spots split 70% men & 30% women — with a heavy representation in the men 50-54; in fact, after the winners of every AG got their spot, only two of the “performance” spots went to women ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Copenhagen: Split 60% men & 40% women — it was the 30-34 women who did a lot of that shift and who took most of the women’s “performance” spots (after the AG winner allocation).
Out of all the “performance” spots across both races, only two went to anyone over 65 (and those were both to the 2nd place man in the 65-69). Scrolling down to find the AG winners in the older age-groups, I would say a rough takeaway is the algorithm does not adequately reflect the 65+ efforts right now.
«This will obviously be different depending on the location & demographics; we’ll likely see the biggest change in future N. American races. But it gives you a rough idea of how the new system played out on its first weekend.»
This week’s Kona thought: It is confirmed: The algorithm that determines the age-graded rankings (and, thus, determines who gets to go to Kona 2026) is currently based on age-grouper Kona performances from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022. This will roll forward each year in the future. At first, I just thought it seemed kinda generally dumb to be basing qualification on things from a decade earlier — because I think we can all agree (whatever we think about how that breaks) that the sport looks very different than it did in 2016.
But the more I thought about it, the more this simply doesn’t pass a basic logic test.
Think about it this way: The algorithm is based on the top 20% of people in Kona, which mean it looks at people who already qualified under whatever system was used that year. Now, there was one system of qualifying pre-2020 and a different system post-2020. So if your argument is that the old pre-2020 system was not fair (largely to under-participated groups — women + older age-groups) and thus we needed a new system (which, take it or leave it, this is essentially what was said and why the new system was rolled out), but then you use who qualified UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM (2016-2019) to establish the math that CREATES THE NEW SYSTEM — then all you’re really doing is locking in the old model. ie. If someone had to be disproportionality good as a woman or 60+ athlete to qualify under the old system (because of participation-based proportional qualification), and then those disproportionally good athletes are now being used to establish the new benchmark… Do you see what I’m saying? It’s fundamentally statistically different than pulling from the entire pool of Ironman athletes to determine who should qualify out of that pool.
I mostly feel a third-party observer’s anthropological disinterest in how this plays out. But, I think there’s a larger point to be made — which I am not disinterested in — about how systems are created. Because they are not created in a vacuum; they reflect back the history and views of those who create them. And too often we then act as if these systems are agnostic arbiters, but they’re not. Like ‘oh well the algorithm says you’re not good enough what is there to do.’
LOL: On the Feisty Tri podcast, when we were talking about what we’re looking forward to, I said that no one wants to hear more of my thoughts on what’s happening with Kona — and Chelsea Burns said to just give her the short version. So, maybe it’s because I was getting sick, but if you want 90 unfiltered seconds of what I actually think and would tell you over drinks, then you can hear that just after the hour mark in the episode.
From the races
IM Kalmar: Chelsea Sodaro got her validation, but it looked like a tough marathon. Katrine Græsbøll Christensen picked up her first Ironman win with a course record.
IM Copenhagen: Finn Große-Freese also set a course record in Copenhagen, and I feel like we’re starting to get to the point where if you don’t set a course record what are we even doing. (Also, I had to copy those names to get the right types of letters.)
XTERRA Euro Champs: Apparently the second largest XTERRA event in the world. Major shoutout to Solenne Billouin (the 3x world champ), who has moved to 70.3 racing but jumped into this race and won. Though Marta Menditto locked down the World Cup overall title because of her consistency ahead of next month’s world champs.
Also, apparently Tim O’Donnell raced the new XTERRA course in Ruidoso, New Mexico as an age-grouper and took fifth overall.
Louisville 70.3: Yay Jackie Hering! Jason West! Both with fastest runs of the day.
Results: IM Kalmar, IM Copenhagen, XTERRA European Championship, Louisville 70.3, World Games — Duathlon, Challenge Gunsan, Hradec Kralove 70.3
Mark your calendars
T100 French Riviera: Start lists are out for next weekend, and like we said there are a few athletes trying to do the T100 and the WTCS. Hayden Wilde has even said he’s going to try to win the world titles in both.
Zell am See 70.3: And the next IM Pro Series race will have Kat Matthews and Solveig Løvseth.
The -ish
Some of the things worth knowing about this week in our sports — or that I just think are interesting.
I don’t know why the Santara Group decided they needed to create their own triathlon world ranking system. (I mean, presumably, because they felt their athletes were not being treated fairly by the PTO’s ranking system.) But they did and it exists. (Triathlon World Rankings/Instagram)
If you didn’t hear, USAT had to cancel the second day of the Age-Group National Championship because of massive flooding in Milwaukee. And, I get it, a championship race being canceled is rough, but it makes me lol when people have comments about whether it was the right call or not. As if USAT had any say in the matter and wasn’t told by the city/police that there was a zero percent the event was happening. (USAT/Wisconsin Examiner)
Also been hearing more and more about what it takes to put on races (and every event has some kind of break-even number of registrations needed and for the events with more fancy overhead *cough* the break-even number is bigger). Triathlete talked to a few RDs about challenges right now. (Triathlete)
And it sounds like there’s some dispute over why the Valencia World Cup & T100 got canceled, but now the organizer is saying it was financial (not construction-related). And I have to say it’s getting very tough for World Triathlon to find host cities that can afford to put on races (which is probably why they’re weighing a variety of ways to hand off that obligation). (Inside the Games)
Precision is officially the title sponsor of 70.3 Worlds now (and they made a cute video to announce it). I haven’t been planning to go to Marbella but people keep trying to sell me on it. (Instagram)
Justus Nieschlag has a kinking in his femoral arteries and is trying to decide what to do about it. (Instagram)
Lisa Norden’s been going through IVF. (Instagram)
Tara Dower just broke another overall FKT — beating the men’s and women’s fastest known time on the Long Trail. (Runner’s World)
Both the men’s and women’s course records were set at the Leadville 100 (running) this weekend. David Roche broke his own, and Anne Flower took down a 31-year-old record in her first-ever 100-miler (and took second overall behind David). Given that last year David broke a 20-year-old Leadville record, I have to wonder if people are finally figuring Leadville out? (Twitter/Runner’s World)
The One Water Race is 39 hours in as I write this and there are four teams left. Two years ago, I wrote about why it’s the hardest race you haven’t heard of. (One Water/Triathlonish)
UTMB week is next week, and there’s some interesting tension between UTMB and the World Championships in Spain in September. (Mile & Stone)
The formatting on Outside websites has gotten insane, but if you can get past that this article about how one woman trained for triathlon while in Antartica was interesting. (Triathlete)
Six bikes were stolen from T1 at Ironman Copenhagen. Which, unfortunately, does happen rarely (though I feel like usually the things stolen are computers or watches). (TV2 Kosmopol)
The L.A. Olympics are selling naming rights for venues. (Los Angeles Times)
TrainingPeaks is adding a calculated oxidation rate for fueling insights to workouts. Which I’m super curious to test. (Training Peaks)
First generation Wahoo computer units are having massive problems — which seems to have to do with the fact that the computers hit the number of data packets they could hold and simply reset. And, according to the email I got from Wahoo this morning, it’s not resolved yet. (DC Rainmaker)
A multi-part series on the rise of stalking in sports. (The Athletic)
One last thing
This might be very niche, but my god people with the weighted vests. (Like maybe instead of doing banded pull-ups with a weighted vest (???) just build up to doing a non-banded pull-up without a vest. Logic.)
