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Drafting and Free-Riding in Mass-Start Triathlon: Evidence from a COVID-19 Start-Format Discontinuity

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  • Reichel, Felix

Abstract

Drafting in the swim leg of mass-start triathlon transfers a hydrodynamic cost advantage to the bike and run, where it surfaces as a change in relative rank. I use cross-stage rank improvement as a reverse proxy for free-riding and study its determinants in a ten-year panel of athlete × event records centred on 2020, when COVID-19 response policies replaced mass starts with individually staggered starts and mechanically curtailed drafting. A compact two-stage contest model, in which drafting enters the bike–run stage as a multiplicative cost shifter, organises the predictions. Identification combines pooled OLS with athlete and event fixed effects and a sharp regression-discontinuity design at the 2019/2020 cut-off. Free-riding was substantial before 2020, fell sharply in 2020 (a local-linear RDD estimate of about −31 rank places; a local-cubic estimate of about −92), and recovered only partially afterwards. The gains are largest for weaker swimmers and deeper drafting positions, the gender gap is modest, and they rise with swim-group size at an estimated log–log elasticity of about 0.43. The 2020 disruption thus acts as a contraction of the feasible set for free-riding, and its recovery is uneven rather than broad-based.

Suggested Citation

  • Reichel, Felix, 2026. "Drafting and Free-Riding in Mass-Start Triathlon: Evidence from a COVID-19 Start-Format Discontinuity," SocArXiv dyrcf_v2, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:dyrcf_v2
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/dyrcf_v2
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