An FAQ: The Problems with ‘Proportional’ Awards Allocation in Triathlon

Last week, Ironman announced a return to a combined men’s and women’s Ironman World Championship race. And a return to the pre-COVID system of allocating championship spots based on participation rates.

Instead of simply awarding an equal number of spots to men and women, this system — known as “proportionality” within triathlon — takes a set number of total qualifying slots to the world championship and divides them up to men’s and women’s age groups via a black box algorithm based on how many people start a given qualifying race. When this system was last used it resulted in about 25-30% of the athletes at the Ironman World Championship being women.

It should be noted the Ironman 70.3 World Championship race also uses a proportionality system, plus some additional spots for the women under Ironman’s Women for Tri initiative — despite the fact that the men and women race on separate days in the 70.3 World Championship (and so have no impact on each other’s races).

We often hear that this system is “fair” because there are more men who do triathlon. Here’s why that’s wrong — and answers to the most common arguments against equal spots.

We have to first acknowledge that no other sport or championship event operates in this way. This “proportionality” system is specific to long-course triathlon; even Olympic-distance triathlon simply qualifies the xx best men and xx best women in each age-group to the world championship. To argue that proportionality is fair is to argue that all other sports somehow operate unfairly.

That’s because if you take the 1,000 best women and the 1,000 best men in the world, then they are the best in the world. And they then compete against each other to determine who is the best among them. That is the stated goal of a world championship: awarding who is best in the category on the day. How the women compare to the men is not actually relevant for determining who is the best woman, because the women and men do not compete against each other. Whether or not some people feel that the women on the start line should be better or there should be more of them who do triathlon beyond those 1,000 also is not relevant to determining that these are the best women in the world. No one is arguing there are better women who should be there in their place.

To, instead, take the 1,000 best men but only the 500 best women in the world does not provide the same opportunity to achieve the stated goal of determining who is the best in the world on that day.

“Fair” is a subjective term that can be used to justify opposing arguments, and becomes a fight over who gets to decide what is fair. “Equal” is objective.

"But Kona is a unique event, and there are limited spots."

Kona, as one-day world championship event, is relatively unique in the sports world. But the concept of finite resources is not.

The Boston Marathon has a limited number of spots, yet it creates time standards that provide a much more even split among men and women. And in doing so it has seen increased numbers of women over its time. Or, when we look at the history of Title IX — the federal law in the U.S. that mandated equal funding for boys and girls — we see similar issues at play. When the law was passed, the arguments against providing girls with equal funding were the same: There were more boys who play sports, so to give girls equal time in the gym or the pool or equipment would take it away from the boys. Yet, in providing equal access based not on historical trends that had already gotten us to that point (where fewer girls played sports because they had not had the chance) but based on goals of equality and what we wanted for the future (more girls playing sports because they had the chance), Title IX was pivotal in changing female sports participation.

"It’s actually easier for women to qualify for Kona, though, because there are so many fewer of them. If we provide equal spots, then the women making it to the world championship just aren’t good enough, they aren’t world championship material."

I would point out, again, that they are the best in the world. You’re not suggesting there are better women; you’re just not happy with how good these women are. That is a subjective judgement — what you think is hard, I might think is easy.

More isn't the same as better: The “proportionality” system, however, also operates on the assumption that quantity equals quality in a linear fashion — ie. that every additional person is equally distributed across the talent spectrum. That’s not how it actually plays out, though.

Yes, when there are more people doing a sport the level at the top is pushed from below and so gets faster. And, yes, when there are more people in a sport, there are more chances for someone in that mix to turn out to be really good. Absolutely, if you give a larger number of people the resources and time, they will get faster.

But this doesn’t happen at the same rates. What we actually see is that the first people to enter a sport are disproportionality the most dedicated. They have to be in order to overcome the barriers that have kept them out. Once they are given the resources and time, they will be among the best in their category. And what we see, when the data is broken down, is that the top end of the women’s field is at least comparably as good as the top of the men’s field. What the women’s field doesn’t have is large quantities of middle-of-the-pack average athletes — because those equivalent female athletes have not been as welcomed into the sport and face continuing barriers to access. 

The end result of this is that typically women have to win their age-group outright in order to qualify while men can be 4th or 5th or 6th. There are numerous instances from this system of times, for example, when a woman who was third amateur overall didn’t get a world championship spot because she was second or third in her age-group and there was only one spot for that age-group; whereas the man in that age-group, who was much farther back overall, did get to go. Or, there are examples where a woman who didn’t get a spot literally crossed the line faster than a man who did get a spot in the same age-group. Is that sending the best athletes to the world championship?

This is what leaves women feeling that the system is unfair to them. That whether or not they get to go to a world championship is not based on how good they are or how good their direct competitors are, but is based on how many men — who they do not compete against — start the qualifying race on that day.

"But there are big gaps in the women’s fields between those top athletes and everyone else. Sometimes you end up with someone who doesn’t deserve to go to the world championships getting to go."

Even if we concede that it matters if there’s a gap in the women’s fields, this is not uncommon in women’s sports as they overcome historical barriers. Women’s world records, for example, typically improve quickly and then slowly and then in jumps. There, often, is a gap between the best in the world and the rest — but they catch up faster when given equal access at the top.

Look, for example, at soccer. The U.S. women were incredibly dominant for a long time (largely because of Title IX and then because of the aspirational effect of the 1999 World Cup bringing huge numbers of girls into the sport) and there’d be first round or qualifying games where the U.S. would win by large margins, but once the World Cup started allowing as many women's teams as men's it gave more teams and more players a chance to develop. And once European soccer infrastructures started funding their women’s pro leagues and pro teams at the top-level, the global gap closed very (!) very quickly. 

Or, look within triathlon. Early on, in the Olympic side of the sport, the commitment was made to give women equal start lines and prize money — even though there were far fewer of them. And at first, there were huge gaps between the best and the rest; there’d be races with just six or seven women lining up. But the gap closed and the women’s side of the sport, at the Olympic level, is incredibly deep now. In just 20-30 years.

Every time women are given equal chances to grow into the top-level, the performance gaps close faster.

"I’ve seen qualifying spots roll way down, though, past the podium — which makes a joke of the process."

That’s a different argument than equal spots. If you want to get rid of rolldowns, then get rid of rolldowns and make it the top 5 men and women, period.

"Giving women equal spots would take away spots from the men."

Ironman actually has a unique opportunity right now because they have said they negotiated more spots in Kona (~3,000 total) for 2026 and beyond. That means they could divide them evenly with 1,500 women and 1,500 men. Historically, pre-COVID, the race was capped around 2,300-2,400 total athletes, with about 700 women and 1,600 men. These extra spots give Ironman a chance to increase women’s access without having to decrease men’s access.

This feeling, though, is not uncommon. It’s similar to what we see play out in the corporate world: If men had 80% of the CEO jobs before, then getting just 60% now feels like a lot less. But you have to consider which part of that sentence is the unfair part.

"The world championships should be hard. Ironman says the data shows it was too easy and, after qualifying to a world championship women didn’t return."

Since providing women with their own race in 2022, there have been just two cycles that women could have re-qualified. Either from 2022 to 2023, or from 2023 to 2024. In essence what Ironman is saying is women who did Kona in 2023 didn’t come back for Nice in 2024 at high enough rates. There is an obvious confounding variable there: Take rates to Nice were much lower for both men and women, and many qualification races for Nice in 2024 were right around the same time as the Kona 2023 race. Additionally, Ironman’s own data says all athletes (men and women), on average, have a decrease in participation in the year after completing a world championship; two cycles is not a long enough window to know if those women will ultimately return.

The parallel notion that too many women were qualifying to the world championships on their first attempt is more of a business branding and customer loyalty issue for Ironman, not an issue of determining who is the best in the world. If Ironman thinks it was too easy to qualify, that issue should already be resolved by decreasing the numbers equally across men and women. The last three years, Ironman was trying to fill 2,300 spots in each race; filling 1,500 each instead would likely automatically address whatever concern there was about how hard v. how easy it is to qualify for a world championship.

It should be noted, though, that the idea that it was too easy to qualify and so women didn’t need to do as many races before they qualified and so they then leave the sport, would be at odds with how these issues have played out in every other sport.

"Equal spots at the Ironman World Championship won’t increase the number of women in the sport, though. No one starts triathlon just because there are more spots to a world championship."

That’s not how it has worked in other sports. For a recent example, four times as many girls did take up cycling in Belgium after Lotte Kopecky won so many things. People do start sports because they dream of being a world champion or an Olympian or doing something that sounds crazy. Girls are not immune to dreaming big.

You can also look again at Title IX — when college scholarships were mandated to be equal, it did have a trickle down effect of bringing more girls into sports. Or, the Olympics — where equal spots have long been a mission — and, in turn, the Olympics became the main stage for female athletes and female athletes in those sports are among the most watched athletes period.

While athletes may not explicitly say they are starting or leaving a sport because of world championship spots, it has a knockdown effect. (More below.)

"You should focus more on getting women started in triathlon. That will increase participation, and then the number of spots to the world championship will go up."

Getting women into triathlon and working to eliminate historical barriers is good. But without anywhere to go, those women then leave.

Think of it like this: When there are equal spots to the world championship, there is space for the women right below that to grow into; then the women below them move into the space they left, and women coming into the sport move into that space. And everyone grows up. This is what we see happen in other sports. When there is, instead, a cap and a ceiling at the top, then women coming in have no space to grow into; they hit a wall and exit out the sides.

What this looked like in practice is that when there was just one Kona spot in an age-group, under this system previously, it could feel impossible to obtain. When this system was in place before what would typically happen is that winning certain age-groups required a woman to be a semi-pro athlete, then women who were regularly 3rd or 4th or 5th simply became discouraged. They don’t leave triathlon specifically because they’ll never qualify to Kona, but they leave because it’s not fun to never have a chance.

If the old system had worked to increase the number of women in triathlon, it would have worked before over decades to increase participation rates. It did not. 

"But even many of the women within triathlon think ‘proportionality’ is fair."

People almost always think whatever system they came through is OK, because they were able to come through it. It’s the same reason it’s hard to get rid of hazing in frats or why some doctors were against ending extremely long shifts for residents even though the stats showed patient outcomes suffered — because those doctors survived it, they think nothing is wrong with it.

Women outside of triathlon, who are not accustomed to this system, do not understand it or think it’s fair. And those are the women we want to attract to the sport.

It should also be noted that attitudes have shifted dramatically since the last time this system was implemented; even within triathlon far fewer women now believe in this system than did before. Women’s sports, in general, are all moving in the direction of equal access, women having their own events, providing equal numbers at World Championships or World Cups or March Madness or the Olympics. Investment in women’s sports and viewership have also skyrocketed in the last five years. To go back to a system that was created over 20 years ago comes now into a world with a very different understanding of what it means to be a female athlete, and with countless more examples of how to build something successfully.