Earlier in the week, Ironman unveiled their new series structure for 2024. Drawing from the PTO and the WTCS, they have sought to add greater integration to their product by creating a common thread through the events on offer.
Now, while the prospect of watching a long distance triathlon sounds like an excellent opportunity for a nap, the new Ironman system may have a hidden component that could prove very interesting. Indeed, it could even be borrowed by the WTCS.
This feature is the rule that points will be determined based on how many seconds an athlete finishes behind the winner.
In the WTCS, points decrease by 7.5% for each position an athlete finishes behind the winner. While the winner gets 1000 points (for an in-season Olympic distance race), 2nd place gets 925 points. By contrast, the new Ironman series will prioritise time over position when it comes to points.
The concept gave us an idea. What if we took the seconds for points approach and applied it to the WTCS?
In this article, we will delve into how the 2023 WTCS would have looked had points been awarded on the basis of seconds. For every race, the winner has been awarded 1000 points (with 1250 for the Final, copying the actual structure). Athletes are awarded points for their four best results, plus their Final result, copying the actual Series. A perfect season would therefore be worth 5250 points.
While the race winner gets 1000 points, the athletes finishing behind get 1000 minus the number of seconds they were behind the winner. If an athlete finishes 2nd and loses by 1 second, they would get 999 points.
We have not applied World Triathlon’s differentiation between the Sprint, Olympic and Super Sprint eliminator formats. Rather, all seconds outside the Final are treated as equal. To argue over whether gaps are more significant in races of different distances is a whole different debate.
One benefit of this system would be to incentivise fighting for every second. It would run the risk of losing some of the blue carpet showboating. Yet on balance it would make for a scenario in which every single moment of the race matters.
Below, we will apply the seconds point system to the men’s and women’s 2023 WTCS. A disclaimer has to made in that the athletes were not actually judged on seconds so it is not necessarily a completely true reflection on how the standings would have looked.
Nevertheless, the new standings make for a fascinating set of results.
The Men’s Top-8
- Léo Bergere : 5191 points
- Hayden Wilde : 5175 points
- Dorian Coninx : 5160 points
- Matthew Hauser : 5148 points
- Vasco Vilaca : 5141 points
- Alex Yee : 5088 points
- Miguel Hidalgo : 5063 points
- Tim Hellwig : 5062 points
You can see the actual WTCS standings here.
The first thing to take away is that the world champion, Dorian Coninx, would not have won the Series. Instead, Léo Bergere would have claimed the title by the slimmest of margins.
It is remarkable how close the top of the field would have been. Only 50 points would have separated 1st from 5th overall. That represented a mere 50 seconds across five races. If nothing else, such tight scoring reinforces the notion that the seconds for points system would make every moment of racing important.
Going by time rather than position could have made for an even more nail-biting season. If you take out Hayden Wilde’s 15 second time penalty from Pontevedra that alone would have handed him the title (as 15 seconds in Pontevedra would be worth 18.75 points with the extra value for the Final).
Matthew Hauser is another athlete that would have benefitted from the seconds structure as he shot up from 7th overall to 4th.
At the same time, the system penalises athletes that did not hit their full quota of races. Pierre Le Corre drops out of the top-20 entirely (after finishing 6th) as he did not race four times in the regular season.
On balance, though, it feels better for the scoring system to reward racing a full season.
Looking at how the men’s standings could have turned out, there is merit in the idea of shifting the WTCS to a seconds for points format. It is not unheard of for World Triathlon to change their scoring parameters. After all, 2023 had a different system to the one used in 2022.
If time becomes everything, the racing could all of a sudden become even more intense.
The Women’s Top-8
- Beth Potter : 5240 points
- Cassandre Beaugrand : 5170 points
- Emma Lombardi : 5089 points
- Taylor Spivey : 4992 points
- Jeanne Lehair : 4975 points
- Kate Waugh : 4964 points
- Sophie Coldwell : 4940 points
- Lisa Tertsch : 4935 points
You can see the actual WTCS standings here.
In contrast to the men’s standings, the top-4 positions in the women’s standings do not change with the new scoring system.
Beth Potter came remarkably close to hitting the perfect score of 5250. The only time she lost was the 10 seconds to Cassandre Beaugrand in Hamburg,
Meanwhile, Beaugrand, Lombardi and Spivey would have all held on to their final finishing positions. Like Hauser in the men’s Series, Jeanne Lehair would have benefitted from the new scoring. Rather than taking 8th overall, the Luxembourg athlete would have risen to 5th.
Moreover, like Le Corre, Summer Rappaport, Taylor Knibb and Georgia Taylor-Brown drop out of the top-20 having not finished the WTCS Final.
The relative lack of change in the women’s Series with the new points speaks to a lesser degree of competitiveness than the men’s. While any of several men could have won the world title, only two women had a realistic shot. Even then, such was Potter’s dominance she rendered the proceedings somewhat processional.
Another significant aspect to note is the issue of WTCS Hamburg. With the multi-round format, Hamburg saw some athletes record faster times in earlier rounds than those that made the last round. As such, it is a lot harder to come up with a way to balance the time differences across the various rounds.
The Hamburg effect is partly the reason for why we have limited the “new look” standings to the top-8 as the numbers outside are skewed more by athletes that did not make the top-10 in Hamburg.
For a seconds scoring system to be deployed, then, a solution would have to found for the Super Sprint eliminator.
All things considered, it is unlikely that World Triathlon shift their scoring structure. In the near future, position rather than time looks like it will be the governing metric of the WTCS.
However, based on the above, a seconds based Series could result in some truly brilliant contests.
