$750 for Ironman PRO registration!
But wait. Is that so bad when you get complimentary entry to all IM and 70.3 qualifying events? In fact it’s very good value if you want to do 3 or more races. That assumes that you are not used to getting complimentary entry, which a lot of guys do and I have once for my last race. But then, of course they promote that,
“By virtue of this membership, all Professional athletes will be included in the Ironman Anti Doping Program, and are subject to the Code of Conduct and Rules.”
which is great, I would love to see a rigorous out of competition anti doping program for PRO Ironman athletes. With $750 pa I’d say you’ll get a night club bouncer to do a pat down and the entry to T1 so I doubt this program will have the bite required if indeed it’s not totally impotent. I’ll reserve judgment however as I have not seen the details.
The age group standard is not going to rocket. It will discourage top age groupers racing the odd PRO cat race here and there and you may see the top age grouper in the top 5 as apposed to 10 or 20 but this is only a few guys. If like the UK your country doesn’t have a PRO license system they will look at your CV, which will worry some guys. This may or may not prove a shock though depending on what they decide the standard should be for PRO status. If you want to race 5+ times a year just submit your CV and take your chance, it could save you a packet.
My next thought was that if I pay this money and can do as many races as I want, can I justify entering any non WTC races like Roth? No, not really, I’m stretched enough! So my view is that it is effectively a loyalty card for 2nd tier PROs. The depth at Roth next year may take a dent when 20 of the PROs go to Switzerland, Austria of Frankfurt but you better be sharp if you want to be the uber-grouper stealing a top ten.
A clever move, and one I’ll probably buy in to. I just hope the claims of anti doping don’t turn out to be all hand waving.
I actually do think the AG standard will go up (albeit in a few years after the new system takes its toll). To get within 5% (slots) or 8% (money) of the WINNER’S time in a race to qualify is a huge change from 10% of the 2nd-place time which has been the system up til now. And the slots will be more toughly contested, no more cruising to a 5th place finish for that last Kona slot well off the winner’s pace because your nearest competitor is so far back it doesn’t matter what time you put in.
There are a lot of mediocre pros who would make awesome age-groupers that will want to get to Kona some way or another — many of them will drop down to AG again once they realise there’s no chance they’ll ever get a slot via the pro route.
Personally I think this is a good thing for the sport… if you look at this year’s Kona results, nearly 75% of the pro field finished *behind* the top 10 age-groupers and that’s just wrong. Either the pros are elite — like they are in every other sport in the world — or they aren’t. This is a step in the right direction to make the elites really be elite.