monty wrote:
One thing overall I'm surprised about is the lack of quality of fields in these ironman series races. When they announced the big prize purse earlier, I really thought that these races would be super stacked at the front, and not full of BOP pros crowding up the races. It really doesnt even feel like the fields are better than what they were before the series money was put in.
I suppose it is the T100 effect and most of the names we have come to recognize are tied up and picking and choosing. That and the olympic year stuff, lot of great athletes who would normally race tied up there too. Really is going to be a nice bonus for some lower lever pros filling out the top 10 positions this year for sure...
And how much do we miss Lionel not racing here, looks like its giving Sam an easy chip shot to the hole...But anything can still happen, just doesnt seem like it at this point.
Huh? This is a bit of a misunderstanding in where the sport has been for the past several years. You used to have WPRO fields of 5. Now We've had several races where the WPRO fields are huge. Which is what you want. The other thing to understand is that there is also an Ironman next week in Mallorca on the pro series and both fields are stacked.
So the only way to have "more" stacked fields is to have less races. And Ironman isn't trying to be T100.
Tons of people on this board talk mad smack on BOP pros, but what we've seen with t100 and now the Ironman Series combined is pros actually racing which is something that wasn't happening en masse. So the fields are packed. Before Miami people didn't think of India Lee as someone who could contend and was going to be a journeyman pro.
Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.