IRONMAN’s New Drafting Rules are a Poor Answer to a Non-Existent Problem

IRONMAN has released its 2026 Competition Rule set. There’s a few interesting nuggets in there. First, all video or imagery taken by an athlete during the race is now grounds for disqualification. We also — of course — have an updated storage rule, with items attached to the top tube of a bike now not allowed to be more than 10 cm tall, and an athlete may not rest their body on it. The much-maligned zipper rule no longer can result in disqualification; instead, you face a time penalty for not complying. And, perhaps in answer to Magnus Ditlev’s tremendous disqualification (and reinstatement) at Frankfurt, “Athletes notified of a red card or disqualification may complete the Event unless otherwise instructed by the Race Referee.” They’re then able to appeal.

I use the word tremendous because, well, it’s exactly how I would react in this situation.

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The most eagerly anticipated change, though, was the official language surrounding the previously announced move for professional athletes and their 20 meter draft zone. That announcement, which came following some data analysis on how much draft benefit there was for male professional athletes at certain distances, was championed by some, and questioned by others, and some pondered whether we should care at all.

I decided to put down the Freezing Cold Take machine for a minute, and decided to wait until the published rule set came out. Because, in that initial announcement from IRONMAN, was language that, frankly, made me question whether or not IRONMAN knew what rabbit hole they were wandering down. “Operational details related to the 20-meter draft zone (e.g., time allowed to pass) will be communicated through the 2026 IRONMAN Competition Rules in advance of implementation to ensure clarity for athletes, officials, and event teams.”

Well, the Competition Rules are here. And there’s some critical “operational details” for the professional 20-meter draft zone that will impact you as an age group participant (and might impact a lot more of you than you think).

Let’s start with the basic framework: professional athletes have a 20-meter draft zone, roughly spaced out to mean 11 bike lengths between riders. Age-group athletes have a 12-meter draft zone, roughly spaced out to mean six bike lengths between riders. Age-group athletes have 25 seconds to complete a pass on another athlete in order to avoid a positional foul. Professional athletes, meanwhile, must do the same in 45 seconds. Additionally, professional athletes may not use a slipstream to initiate a pass; instead, they must move to the left (or right, depending on country that they are riding in) when entering the draft zone to begin their time clock on the move.

So, let’s take a potential real world example: pro athlete X is riding legally along with 10 other riders in a train in Kona. Athlete X is in the last position of that train and decides to move up; because of the legal spacing between all of the other riders, he’s got to move all the way to the front of the train. He’s got 45 seconds per rider in the train to overcome, meaning a total maximum time of 450 seconds — over seven minutes — to complete that move.

The basics are simple. It’s when these two groups mix that is the operational thorn, and most likely to impact IRONMAN’s core customer negatively.

Let’s go directly to the rulebook (with some emphasis added for clarity): “Any athlete who enters the draft zone of another athlete must continuously progress through the draft zone as follows: (i) Athletes (excluding professional athletes) will be allowed a maximum of 25 seconds to pass through the draft zone of another athlete. However, any athlete who rides into the professional field and is passing two or more professional athletes will be allowed a maximum of 45 seconds to complete the pass of each professional athlete.”

And: “Athletes entering the draft zone of a professional athlete (including professional athletes and non-professional athletes) must initiate and execute the pass to the side of the athlete being overtaken and may not approach directly from behind (i.e., no slipstreaming). Failure to do so will result in a drafting violation.”

And lastly: “Athletes who ride into the professional athlete field may not insert themselves
between two or more legally spaced professional athletes.”

To distill all that down: you, age group athlete, must know when you’re dealing with a professional athlete versus anybody else in the field, and then you have to follow this hybrid mix of age group and professional drafting rules in order to be legal. You can be 12 meters behind a pro, but if you decide to pass, you have to use the professional non-slipstream rule. If that pro is solo, you probably only have 25 seconds to complete that pass (it’s not said). If that pro isn’t solo, you can’t slot in; you need to pass everybody and then have the pro rule of 45 seconds per pass to complete.

In fewer words: don’t go near the pro race, or you’re subject to their rules.

In a vacuum, the attempt makes sense. Professional women have long suffered with some degree of interference by the fastest age group men, in no small part thanks to small gaps between pro women’s race starts and the start of the age group field. You’ll see age-group men passing pro women, and then attempting to prevent re-passes, for instance. Or you’ll see pro women legally use the draft off of these age groupers.

The problem is that, in practice, there are far more interactions between the age-group field and pro athletes than these new rules contemplate for. Let’s take the example of a fast age-group male riding up towards professional women. First, the age-group athlete is now tasked with identifying the type of athlete in front in order to determine which set of rules now apply to his pass. Second, he not only must identify that athlete, but also if there are more of them there, as well as the size of the gap between them (in theory, then, this athlete probably needs to study up on RaceRanger and what the light colors mean). And, perhaps crucially, if that age-group athlete decides that there’s more than one pro athlete in front of them, and doesn’t feel like they could clear all of them, the age group athlete is now obligated to not pass.

But this is just one example of the interaction of the pro riders and age groupers, and it assumes only the interaction will come from the fastest of age groupers. There’s also the common multi-loop bike courses and pro athletes riding into age group fields, and now those age groupers will also need to understand a.) who is passing them and, potentially, b.) how they need to clear out space for them. We already have seen how these multi-loop courses can wind up causing chaos for professional athletes without adding additional rules complexity to it.

It also would theoretically quell the chances of a repeat of one of the more viral triathlon moments of 2025, with Sam Laidlow and an age-grouper at IRONMAN Leeds.

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Ultimately, I can’t help but go back to two thoughts: first, this is a problem entirely of IRONMAN’s own design. There was never a need to change the size of the draft zone for professional athletes, no matter what surveys or data showing that there’s certain percentages of savings for pro athletes at a certain following distance or people claiming “integrity and fairness” were saying. Everybody was racing under the same basic ruleset, minus the prohibition of slingshotting for pros.

The beauty of IRONMAN racing is that it has typically not been a story of just about who the best athlete is; instead, it was about who the best racer was. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing. It’s a mix of being in peak physical condition and marrying it with excellent tactics and gamesmanship. It’s things like Chris McCormack notoriously isolating Craig Alexander in 2010 by making sure Alexander missed the bike pack, or Kristian Blummenfelt “waiting for Casper Stornes” in his duel with Jelle Geens at 70.3 worlds this year. I fear we’ll see less of this, not more.

Second, and arguably most important, is that we’re seeing IRONMAN institute a rule for professional athletes that is having a downstream negative impact on the paying customer. And, in a time period where IRONMAN will be facing its largest scale challenger (in the form of the Triathlon World Tour) for age-group athletes in at least a decade, it needs to be laser-focused on improving athlete experience and ensuring customer satisfaction. Instead we’re on about rules negatively impacting athletes. Again.

Perhaps I’m hopeful that IRONMAN will be as quick to revisit this topic as it was with the Great Water Bottle Fiasco of 2025. Because this feels even more short-sighted than that rules drama.

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