Ironman Chattanooga 2016 Results Analysis by Division, by Split, DNS, DNF, Compared to 2014 and more

Quite an astonishing day at Ironman Chattanooga 2016. Relentlessly harsh heat led to a 13:59 average finish time for 1688 triathletes, and an exceptionally high 19% DNF rate, considering all finishers under the typical 17 hour Ironman cutoff time.

But, wait: the official cutoff time, it turned out, was determined to be 16 hours 15 minutes (I have no idea why). That meant another 50 or so athletes who happily finished under 17 hours but after 16 hours 15 minutes got the staggering news they would not be considered Ironman finishers, but instead were classified DNF.

My analysis and charts reveal how brutal it was out there for all Ironman Chattanooga 2016 triathletes. And it's based on results for all who finished under 17 hours.

Ironman 70.3 2015 Rio Results Analysis

Ironman has added several new 70.3 events since our most recent detailed and comparative analysis of half Ironman Rankings.

We'll be catching up as time permits, here's a summary of 2015's Ironman Rio 70.3. At a 5:56 average finish time, it's slightly faster than average, the number of finishers, at 797, is on the low end.

Here's our Analysis of the Rio 70.3 event in 2015.

Best Rio Olympics Coverage: Wall Street Journal (featuring our Analytics)

By Raymond Britt

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The Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize winning Kevin Helliker has written an excellent article, entitled 'At the Rio Olympics, Women Athletes Bump Against a Gold Ceiling'.

While putting the comprehensive article together, as he and others at WSJ reached out to me with a request to conduct analysis that confirmed the ultimate headline.

Seeing that many events in the Rio Olympics appeared to clearly differ by gender, such as womens' notably shorter cycling road course.

In present day endurance events in which both genders complete the same distance, Kevin wondered, do percent of women finish relatively close to men with higher rates/fewer DNFs.


We dove deep into our archives, and analyzed results by gender and division for Boston Marathon (1996-2016) and Ironman Triathlon World Championship (2000 to 2015).

Our striking conclusion: Women have hammered their way to match male finisher rates.

Women endurance athletes have battled year by year to prove mens' equal as measured by finisher rates with the gap sharply narrowing obviously on the historical and trending analysis.

Indeed, there is no reason for differences in event length or course type.

Here's an overview of our analytics findings the Journal relied on:

1. Big Picture 40 Year Evolution of Boston Marathon Finisher rates
-- 1970s: men 20% more likely to finish
-- 1980s: gap closing but still wide, 10% area
-- 2000s: gap slowly disappears

2. Boston Marathon 2016 DNF Rates (see chart, including rates by Division)


-- overall: 3.1%
-- Women 3.5%
-- Men: 2.8%
-- and by division, under 1% most often


3.  Ironman Kona (see 3 charts: DNF Bike, DNF Run, Overall DNF)
-- Overall: 6.7%
-- Women: 6.0% excluding Women Pros
-- Men: 6.2% excluding men pros

For more details, see our comprehensive analyses of
-- Boston Marathon
-- Ironman Kona
-- 500+ analytic/stats Articles, posts, for more than 100