Ironman Gurye 2017: Age Group Results and Kona Qualification
This is going to be a very quick analysis of a new Korean race on the calendar – Ironman Gurye. The event drew a respectable field of 1,500 athletes and offered just 30 slots for the 2018 Ironman World Championship.
As a new Ironman I’ve no results history to give context, so I’ve included stats from the regional championship, Ironman Cairns, for comparison. It should, at least, give some idea of how the new event stands against an existing race.
Although I can’t say how much it relates to the course and conditions in Korea, Gurye was a much slower race than Cairns 2017 in this comparison. The median splits from these distributions do put Gurye towards the slower half of the Ironman calendar.
DNF/DNS rates for the event are unexceptional and are comparable with those from this year’s championship races. There’s no indication that elements of the course of conditions had any impact on completion of the event.
Obviously, with the differences seen between the two distributions the medians will repeat the pattern with mush slower median splits for age groups in Korea.
The race drew a good size local field who took the largest portion of slots. Japan and the US punched well above their weight in terms of qualification places.
The drop off in the top twenty of most age groups is quite rapid there are some big jumps in times after the podium places. Qualifying times at this race, as with the splits in general, would fall in the slower half of Ironman events.
At this stage it’s hard to assess the race from the perspective of Kona qualification. The course may well be tough and slow, but I also suspect it drew a fairly high number of new Ironman athletes. The age group top twenties certainly suggest there wasn’t too much depth at the front.
Based on the athlete list I’ve estimated how the 30 slots were allocated and from that the automatic qualifying times. Actual numbers may have varied and roll down would affect final qualifiers. You can find more statistics on my Kona qualification page.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results and splits from Ironman Gurye 2017 on my Google Drive.
