On Sam Laidlow’s IM World Championship Validation Debacle

July 16, 2024

This past weekend’s IRONMAN event in Vitoria-Gastiez should have been a massive celebration for Antonio Benito Lopez and Kat Matthews, who delivered outstanding race performances on their way to victory — with Benito Lopez winning on home soil, on an epic weekend for Spanish sports.

Instead, the story turned to defending IRONMAN World Champion Sam Laidlow, who, while attempting to validate his World Championship race slot, was disqualified from the race for failing to serve a drafting penalty. Laidlow attempted to protest his disqualification, which saw him finish the full distance of the race and file an official protest. The race jury convened, and denied his protest. The disqualification stood. By most readings of IRONMAN’s own rulebook, this was not a “competitive finish” of the race.

Well, at least until this morning, where IRONMAN announced that Laidlow’s race would still count for validation.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by IRONMAN Triathlon (@ironmantri)

We’re going to unpack this one — on the validation process, Laidlow’s schedule that left him in a precarious position in the first place, and then this pretzel twisting of IRONMAN’s own rulebook that leads us to question what the rules even mean anymore.

The Validation Rule

IRONMAN World Champions, like Laidlow, earn a five-year automatic exemption into the IRONMAN World Championship. Podium finishers auto qualify into the following year’s World Championship. The defending IRONMAN 70.3 World Champion also auto qualifies into the full distance event.

All of these exemption entries have a specific clause that their entry is predicated on “validat(ing) their entry by completing a Validation Race.” A validation race is defined as “racing competitively (as determined by IRONMAN in IRONMAN’s sole discretion) and finishing at least one (1) Qualifying IRONMAN (excluding the 2023 IRONMAN World Championship) OR two (2) Qualifying IRONMAN 70.3 (excluding the 2023 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship) events that offers Pro qualifying slots during the 2024 IRONMAN Qualifying Year. (Period ending August 19, 2024, for IRONMAN events and period ending June 30, 2024, for IRONMAN 70.3 events).”

The validation requirement is not new; it’s been around for many years so as to ensure professional athletes include IRONMAN branded events in their schedule. Nor is the “racing competitively” clause — it was added in the early 2010s so as to ensure that not only athletes were showing up, but actually looking to perform on race day. (No eating a bag of chips on the run, for instance.)

The validation rule makes sense. Yes, it is self-serving for IRONMAN — they want professional athletes racing their races, especially those that have won World Championships. It’s a prevention mechanism so that way your World Champion does not race a full year without coming to your races, and then showing up again. But it’s not, say, a response against the PTO and T100; this rule has been in place since IRONMAN’s biggest competitor’s were Revolution3, or Challenge, or even the former ITU. Get your biggest names to a race or two throughout the year, and then see them again at the World Championships.

Laidlow’s Schedule Adds Complexity

Laidlow was offered, and accepted, a 2024 T100 contract following his IRONMAN World Championship victory. As noted in most of those contracts, PTO athletes needed to race a minimum of five events in their series throughout the year. Following his World Championship victory, Laidlow took the rest of 2023 off, not racing again until March’s T100 event in Miami, where he finished 9th. He then bopped over to the following month’s event in Singapore, where he did not finish the race.

Then there’s nothing until this past weekend.

Laidlow placed all of his IRONMAN validation requirement eggs in a single IRONMAN race, despite having ample time to have finished two 70.3s in this time frame. Or to have chosen an earlier IRONMAN event to attempt to validate. Instead, Laidlow would need all of the stars to align on race day — no penalties, no disqualifications, no mechanical issues, no nothing — in order to ensure that he met the requirements of the rules.

And it blew up spectacularly. Whether or not the drafting penalty itself was warranted is an unnecessary discussion; the drafting rules, even with RaceRanger now on course, make it clear that a.) the penalty remains a discretionary call on the official’s part and b.) judgment calls like drafting are unappealable on their face. Laidlow then missing the next penalty tent, by rule, is an automatic race disqualification. Laidlow continued the race in order to be able to file an official protest, as is his right, and completed the full distance. Post-race, the protest was denied, and Laidlow’s disqualification upheld.

That would typically mean that Laidlow is not considered a finisher, just like anyone who is beyond the time cutoffs but crosses the finish line at an IRONMAN event. That means he did not validate his slot — and with precious few opportunities, with all of them required to be a full distance race, between now and the deadline, it appeared Laidlow’s defense of his world title was in big trouble.

A Non-Finish Is Now a Finish

And now IRONMAN has announced that Laidlow’s disqualification somehow still meets its own criteria for validation.

Their statement, in part, says: “Sam Laidlow’s completion of the Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz triathlon meets Ironman’s written 2024 policy on the Ironman World Championship validation, which stipulates that an athlete must race competitively and finish an Ironman triathlon (or two Ironman 70.3 triathlon races) within the qualifying period.

Sam followed the onsite protest process, acted professionally throughout, and most importantly, showed respect to the process and his fellow competitors, all of which is in the spirit of the sport and reflective of Sam’s professionalism. Sam’s completion of the event matches the fulfillment of other validation eligible athletes and the spirit of the policy extended accordingly.”

Except…it does not “match the fulfillment of other validation eligible athletes.” A disqualification has not ever meant that a race is finished. It’s a non result. It is, by rule, exactly not like anything else, and opens the door to a whole series of claims regarding whether an athlete finished a race or not. Is it just completed the distance? If so, what’s the point of time cut-offs? Or drafting penalties? Or any equipment rules?

It’s also somewhat an insane decision on IRONMAN’s part when their own rulebook offered them a solution that did not require such mangling of the rest of it. Section 7 of IRONMAN’s qualification rules offers Wild Card slots: “Due to extraordinary circumstances, IRONMAN may, in its sole discretion, elect to offer special invitations to participate in the 2024 Championship Race.” This is a pretty extraordinary circumstance — your World Champion was disqualified from the race where he attempted to validate, and would otherwise be ineligible to race. He followed the spirit of racing competitively but was not otherwise eligible. This is what this part of the rules is for.

Ultimately IRONMAN got the correct end result — Sam Laidlow should be on the starting line in October. But how it managed to get there does a disservice to athletes who follow the letter of their rules, from professional to average athlete alike.

Notable Replies

Slowtwitch_News says:

Oh boy this is the coolest news I have seen in months.

It is because of this that I am truly happy.
saint says:

This is amazing news…really great to see!