The second Ironman of the weekend, Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz, was a brand new race. The opening year was mid-sized with roughly 1,750 starters and offered the standard 40 Kona slots for age group athletes. As a new race I don’t have historical results to compare which means this will be a quick look at the results. I have included some data from Ironman Barcelona to give some context.
The distributions from Vitoria-Gasteiz compare quite well with those from Ironman Barcelona 2018. Overall Vitoria-Gasteiz trends very slightly faster, but this is a really small shift in the chart. The differences appears to come from both bike and run which are a fraction faster at Vitoria-Gasteiz. Ironman Barcelona is a fast course and while 2018 wasn’t the fastest year it’s a still a reasonable example; this suggests that Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz offers a fast course.
The DNF rates from Vitoria-Gasteiz are normal for Ironman racing as shown by the comparison with Barcelona last year. Course and conditions didn’t present any additional challenges to competitors beyond racing an Ironman distance.
I’ve not offered comparison of median splits across age groups as they follow similar trends to the distributions: Vitoria-Gasteiz generally slightly faster than Barcelona 2018.
The new race drew quite a wide range of nationalities to compete with Kona slots spread widely among them.
The main thing the age group top twenty charts show is how fast Kona qualification placings were. A lot of sub-9 hour Ironman qualifiers in the biggest age groups. While the course appears to be fast that’s still a challenging qualifier.
Based on the athlete lists I’ve calculated the Kona slot allocation and from that the automatic qualification times in each age group. Final allocation may vary and roll down will influence times (two age groups appear to have had no finishers ensuring 2 slots rolled to other divisions). You can compare this with other races on my Kona qualification page.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz 2019 on my Google Drive.
