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To draft or not to draft

Just wondering what people think about the current rules of ITU racing, in particular the ability to draft in the bike section? My understanding for allowing it is because they want the winner to be the person who crosses the winning line first, rather than wait for any time penalties to be handed out afterwards (although I could be wrong as I don't see why they couldn't apply them during the run so the first across the line is still the winner).

Personally, I'd prefer drafting to be illegal as it is with regular triathlons as this way everyone is on their own with no tactical support from others. It seems to work well enough with Ironman races. I think changing the rules would throw up some changes as to who ends up on the podium each time, which would be great to see.

Just throwing it out there for anyone who's interested.

Cheers,

Comments

  • Andrew4Andrew4 Posts: 190

    Macarone, my problem with drafting is that now that you have a domestique like Tom Davison in the races for NZ you don't really have to be able to swim very well, as long as you are in his pack on the bike the only thing that matters is how fast you run and therefore run speed is disproportionately important to end result especially when you get flat bike courses with lots of dead turns which make breakaways nigh on impossible.

    Yes you still have guys like the Brownlees and Gomez who are capable of swimming and cycling very well (as we saw in London 2013) but throw in someone like Davison and it brings the Murrays and the Molas who, in my view, are simply not as good TRIATHLETES as their results suggest. Right now ITU is all about who has the most energy left to put a winning run.

    Of course we want to see the run get its fair share of credit (and watching Gwen Jorgensen storm through the pack on the women's side makes for some fantastically exciting races) but at the moment the balance is off and as a result the bike leg has become 60 minutes of energy conservation where there is very little change to the race dynamic.

  • MacaroneMacarone Posts: 58

    Maybe if we write a nice letter to the ITU they might change?

    Good to hear, I'm not the only one that thinks this way though.

  • sgberreysgberrey Posts: 2

    What I'd like to see is some Time Trial style triathlons. Maybe the ITU should consider running one of their sprints as a pure time trial. Max 60 competitors, 30 seconds apart. Then we'd see who the best really is.

  • I find it way more exciting being draft legal

  • DDTTRIDDTTRI Posts: 21

    I love the drafting and it adds more to the tactics on the bike, I feel makes it more spectator friendly.

    I actually think the emergence of Mola etc who are not as well rounded as the brownlees is more down to the increase in Sprint Tri's this year. Shortening the swim and bike makes it much harder for groups to appear and overemphasises the run.

    I think the drafting should stay personally, but I do think less sprints. I loved the relay however and would love to see more of that!

  • MacaroneMacarone Posts: 58

    Well, I didn't see that coming!

    http://www.220triathlon.com/news/draft-legal-racing-coming-to-itu-sprint-distance-age-group-worlds/8931.html

    Never say never but my first thoughts aren't positive - it's going to change who wins the races and also potentially more dangerous, very few triathletes have proper bike racing skills to handle riding in groups as will naturally happen in these races.

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