issue #134: May 7, 2025
All-sporters, I’ve sorta kinda a little bit started training again. Or “training” would be a strong term. But I’ve started to build back from them cutting my stomach open and pulling a kid out — with 20-minute swims and lots of walks. If I put my stones in for UTMB next summer, then I have 15 months to go from walking to getting in 100-mile shape. No problem.
I also want to make sure you all know that we’ll be relaunching the Feisty Triathlon podcast with a live episode and special guest next week on May 14 @ 3 p.m. ET — you can tune in on the Feisty Media Youtube and subscribe to the podcast feed.
Hope your training (and sleeping) is going slightly better than mine!
- Kelly
The most common arguments against equal slots to the world championship
Ten years ago, when triathlon was fighting over whether the pro women “deserved” the same number of Ironman world championship spots as the pro men, people made charts and analyzed the fields to prove depth and showed all the stats and talked and talked and talked. And so, depending on how long you’ve been doing this, you’ve spent a decade (two?) really believing that if we can just find the right set of facts, the right dataset, if we just engage in enough good faith conversations then the whole debate will inch slowly forward on that arc of progress we were promised.
And it felt like it had worked. Sorta. Enough.
The conversations around women’s sports seemed to have fundamentally changed since then. No one’s really arguing anymore that the pro women don’t deserve their own clean race and stage. We finally saw how it played out so differently once they had their day. We saw how amazing the all-women’s events were. We all turned ourselves inside out to make the first Women’s Kona a success. And when it was over, we thought: We did it! It was all worth it!
Like Sara & I said on the “emergency podcast,” this is why so many women were so tired last week. Not because they don’t want a return to Kona (though I think many are ambivalent), not because there isn’t a case for having the men in the same location (though I think many are ambivalent). But because it’s so so hard to be back listening to the same arguments against equality again, to be asked to rehash the same things that we all worked so long to get through, to be told now that we just have to repeat more of the same conversations — as if nothing ever happened, nothing changed, no one learned anything.
Look, god bless those of you who are crunching the data now to prove the age-group women deserve equality, and engaging in the internal tri back-and-forths. I can’t.
I thought Tamara Jewett’s piece working through the issues herself was well-done and reasonable.
I think the work Phil’s done and Bianca in the UK to crunch the numbers and try to figure out competitive-ness is interesting and well-thought-through. (Bianca is coming out with a report soon, but her analysis of Ironman finishers in essence shows that the number of women who finish within 15% of the female winner’s time is basically the same as the number of men who finish within 15% of the male winner’s time — despite larger quantities of men behind them. And in the races where the women’s participation numbers are lower, the women are actually more competitive comparably — probably because if you’re gonna do tri in those places you gotta be in it to win it.) All these numbers show (again!) what we knew: That the band/echelon of men & women at the peak of the fields are, at least, comparable in performance and competitiveness; that the quantity of slower men is what’s missing from the women’s fields because of all those societal barriers we talk about all the time.
Bless them, they’re doing the lord’s work, and I mean this as un-jaded as possible, but: WE’VE BEEN DOWN THIS ROAD SO MANY TIMES BEFORE.
I didn’t have it in me last week to go on every tri podcast and explain these same things over and over. Trying to prove your own deserved-ness can have the added perk of making you slowly insane, and I’m trying to go less insane these days. If the conversations aren’t in good faith, anyway, then what’s the point.
[And for the record: Drunkenly crashing a private party in Kona to rant at a bunch of women, who didn’t ask for your opinion and weren’t having that discussion, about how we should be focused instead on gender discrepancies among sanitation workers in New York is not a good faith conversation. And if you did that fairly recently, then you’re going to be hard-pressed now for me to take you seriously as a “reasonable” triathlon commentator who I’m supposed to rationally engage with. Yes, this is a real example.]
So, instead: I wrote an FAQ of the most common arguments people make against equal slots — featuring ‘but Kona is unique’ + ‘the women just aren’t as good’ + ‘really it’s easier for them’ + ‘I saw a slot roll down really far’ + ‘it’ll take spots away from the men.’
Before we get into the competitiveness question and the logistics, though, I do think it has to be said (again) that no other sports operate this way, and that’s not because they don’t have finite resources and space.
Here’s what I wrote about why equal spots is the norm now in nearly all sports:
It’s because if you take the 1,000 best women and the 1,000 best men in the world, then they are the best in the world. And they then compete against each other to determine who is the best among them. That is the stated goal of a world championship: awarding who is best in the category on the day. How the women compare to the men is not actually relevant for determining who is the best woman, because the women and men do not compete against each other. Whether or not some people feel that the women on the start line should be better or that there should be more of them who do triathlon beyond those 1,000 also is not relevant to determining that these are the best women in the world. No one is arguing there are better women who should be there in their place.
To, instead, take the 1,000 best men but only the 500 best women in the world does not provide the same opportunity to achieve the stated goal of determining who is the best in the world on that day.
You’re not suggesting there are better women who should be there instead; you’re just not happy with how good these women are. That is a subjective judgement — what you think is hard, I might think is easy. Equal is objective.
On a completely unrelated point: For all of us who remember what a one-day men’s & women’s Kona was like, a 3,000-person race just sounds kind of miserable, right? Eager to see what these innovations are that’ll solve the math problem of the massive draft packs.
Wildflower is back!
It didn’t have a pro race and it was certainly smaller than the old days, but Wildflower Triathlon was back this past weekend.
Word is the camping and sunburned drinking were the same; the trail run, open water swim, and off-road tri were different. I had planned to do a relay, but see: C-section.
There are plenty of much-loved independent races all over the world. They’ve nearly all struggled in the last five to eight years. This was one that helped build triathlon in its California heyday. I hope that means it’s able to survive now. I hope that means more of these independent off-grid events are coming back.
From the races
Venice-Jesolo 70.3: I think the Norwegian Method has officially started working for at least one Norwegian woman; Solveig Løvseth is getting better and better at 70.3s and won this one handily. Sounds like she’ll next be trying out the 140.6 distance in a few weeks. And, in the men’s race, I had never heard of Panagiotis Bitados before — but he was, apparently, one of 70% of the men’s pro field who have very effectively moved to 70.3 from short-course (at least for the year) and he’s got a wildcard (or contender, whatever we’re calling them now) for T100 San Francisco.
In the not-pro-race: The age-groups packs looked classicly terrible.
Port Macquarie 70.3: A nearly completely Australian pro race.
XTERRA Weston Park: The first XTERRA World Cup in the UK, evidently (since it was previously not a World Cup event), and both Felix Forissier and Alizee Paties remain undefeated this year.
Mark your calendars
St. George 70.3: A bunch of smaller races and a World Triathlon World Cup this weekend, but really it’s one last dance for St. George — oh, how we go from every world championship being hosted in the land of endurance (I believe is the motto they were going with) to no races. It actually really was a great 70.3 course. For the last hurrah, it’s a pretty stacked start list. My picks are: Lionel & Paula.
WATCH: *This* Saturday at 8:30 a.m. ET/5:30 a.m. PT on Outside Watch in the U.S. or proseries.ironman.com
Results: Venice-Jesolo 70.3, Port Macquarie 70.3, XTERRA Weston Park
The -ish
And a few other quick things worth knowing about this week in our sports.
The Traka is like Europe’s Unbound — the biggest gravel race over there — and there were quite a few triathletes this year: Georgia TB, Ruth Astle, Alistair Brownlee with a snapped steering tube, and of course Heather Jackson fully in the gravel world now. (Instagram)
The women’s Vuelta started this past weekend with absolute chaos in Stage 1. Why was there only one UCI inspector?! (Velo/Instagram)
Hayden Wilde ran a 27:39 10K and then had a bad bike crash and is in the hospital. (Tri247/ESPN)
Lucy CB talks about how she’s been dealing with Celiac’s. (Youtube)
Marjolaine Pierre got stuck in Valencia, after the power went out everywhere. Which feels like one of those funny stories you’ll tell one day about things that happened back when you were a pro triathlete. (Instagram)
Olympic medalist Fred Kerley was arrested at the hotel during the Grand Slam Track meet in Miami, for punching his ex-girlfriend — but he says he was arrested because he exercised his right to counsel. Which I’m not saying doesn’t happen, but. (ESPN/Athletics Illustrated)
The Grand Slam Track events have also been getting better and improving the production. It could work! (Citius Mag)
Supertri announced one of its championship league events will be in Chicago, with more announcements coming next week — though I think we probably could guess. Supertri also has an athlete advisory board now; no word on if it has more or less power than the PTO Athlete Board. (Supertri)
The PTO announced a T100 event (pros & age-groupers) in Australia in March. (World Triathlon)
I found this announcement fascinating: That the one-hour cycling world record holder is coming out of retirement to go after her world record…in two days. One has to presume retirement did not involve a lot of retiring. (Cycling Weekly)
Courtney Dauwalter ultimately dropped out of Cocodona 250, but I have so many questions about the fact that she was stopping at stop lights. (Outside Run/Instagram)
Nine years after she last set it, Katie Ledecky broke her 800m world record. That’s a long time. (The Athletic)
And I have no feelings — or, rather, my feelings all cancel each other out — about colleges’ efforts to turn their athletes into influencers. (New York Times)
One last thing
It’s not wrong.
I suspect I know who the drunken fool is and I'm dying to know if I'm right.
Re: Kona and all that BS... PREACH, sister! It's exhausting.