Ironman Cozumel is the second race to review from the last weekend. It’s a mid-sized event with the standard 40 age group Kona slots on offer. In performance terms Cozumel tends to be mid-range, but times have varied a lot over the years and it’s not the most consistent course. This year falls inline with historic data although individual splits vary more.
Overall the finishing distribution for the 2019 race is very similar to the amalgamated results of the previous ten years. This covers a slower run distribution and faster bike distribution at this year’s event though. Swim times in Cozumel were fast, but the course has seen a broad range of times over the years and 2019 wasn’t;’t exceptional. Bike and run differences appear to balance each other out for a consistent overall distribution.
The DNF rates for this year’s race are consistent with previous races (noting that rows in red indicate result sets with unclear DNS or DNF numbers). As a whole the course produces a high, but not extreme level of DNF for Ironman.
Median trends floor the pattern of the distributions. We have comparable swim times, faster bike times and slower run times for the majority of age groups.
Cozumel draws quite a wide field of athletes with a rough third from Mexico and a third from the US. It spreads the Koan slots widely too.
Tracking age group times for specific positions highlights the variability of the Cozumel course. This is not a consistent or predictable race compared with many others on the Ironman calendar. This is especially the case as you move further back in the field.
Based on the number of starters I’ve calculated the Kona slot allocation at Ironman Cozumel and from that what the automatic qualification times would be. These numbers do not factor in roll down. You can compare this with other races on my Kona qualification page.
For the most part the top twenty times in each age group trend close to the course averages. There are some exceptions which trend faster though. Most of the women’s age groups do come in faster than average, with F45-49 and F50-54 being particularly strong. For the men the M18-24 division saw fast times at the front and M60-64 had a particularly strong performance.
You can access a spreadsheet of the full results from Ironman Cozumel 2019 on my Google Drive.
