Changes to Ironman World Championship Qualifying & Lottery

Read about them here.

If you don't want to read the synopsis or listen to the podcast that is linked, here are the highlights:

if you’ve raced 12 or more Ironman branded triathlons (full 140.6 distance only), then you’ll get automatic qualification – coming out of the existing lottery pool.  However, since some folks have raced quite a few more, then they’ll be sorting them by total number of races entered.  Thus, just because you’ve raced 12, doesn’t mean you have an automatic entry into Kona in 2012.

For the remaining lottery slots, they’ll be introducing waiting system, based on waiting list. Going back six years, each time you entered – adds a ticket to the lottery.  

Essentially, what this does is give an AQ to people who've done a lot of IM-branded events, but its still limited to the number of lottery spots available.  Just because you've done 12 IMs, doesn't mean you are getting in.  There are athletes on both sides of the argument, some love it, some hate it.

From a business perspective it's genius.  There are scores of "weekend warriors" out there that go get their M-dot at a WTC event and then transition over to other 140.6 events to save some money because they know they'll never qualify for Kona.  Now these people will be pouring their money into IM events looking to gain that Kona spot.  Not only that, but it makes the remaining lottery spots that much more coveted.  They'll still be raking in the money from lottery registrations.  The "waiting list" works to ensure people will continually sign up for the lottery to get extra tickets.  And lastly, they just created more demand for their events.  The magic number is 12.  People are going to be targeting their twelfth race. At the current IM registration price, that $7860 that WTC can count on from a lot of folks.

I know a lot of people complain about WTC.  Say what you want about them, but they have some really smart folks working for them.  They are staying a step ahead of the competition.  With the HITS Tri Series starting and Rev3 expanding, this is a brilliant move to keep athletes coming back to the IM races.

Even as someone who is a purist and thinks you should have to qualify for Kona (and Boston) to participate, this new rule has me at least pondering the idea.