Role of the presenter (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
The rules stipulate background music is played, but not that a presenter talks about the tricks during the runs. I would add something to that effect as a subrule, since it does change the style of the event. It's also incredibly hard for the judges to not be colored by how the presenter talks about the various tricks (ie, when they count and when they don't) so actually adding rules about the role of the presenter would be good.
There's also a number of challenges given that the presenter may know certain riders and tricks better than others. Sometimes this is solved by having someone else speak or by the presenter making up names for the tricks shown. Neither is optimal.
Obviously the presenter is there to entertain the audience but the presenter can make the riders nervous or influence the judges' judgement on tricks. As such I think the rules should mention the presenter and discuss the role, what's appropriate and what's not and how the presenter and the judges should work together.
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How specifically would you lay out the rules to limit the presenter's influence?
In the past, I have assigned two presenters, one knowledgeable in Freestyle and another in Flat, and they work together to correctly identify tricks. The Flat announcer takes the lead when a flat rider runs, and vice versa for the Freestyle announcer.
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I think the role of the presenter should be described in the rules. Those rules would then also discuss if riders can ask the presenter not to shout out their tricks (if needed), if the riders can bring another presenter (if they want to), what recourse there would for riders if the presenter makes mistakes or otherwise mess up a ride, etc. At Unicon in Spain some flatlanders asked that the presenter was switched out.
I've been presenting a bunch and it's hard thing to do with few guidelines – if attempts should be called out, when tricks should count and when they shouldn't, etc. Sometimes I miss tricks if the routine is very fast and sometimes the rider fails a bunch of tricks and there's nothing to call out.
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Anyways, I haven't raised this issue because I think there's problems with how presenting is being done now. I've rather raised the subject since it's something that's missing in the rules and I think it would be good to have some clear guidelines everyone know and agree on (including where there's freedom for the organizers and where there isn't)
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I don't have any problems with the presenter. Of course there are mistakes but those happen regardless whom you put as presenter. I wouldn't make any rules for that. I wouldn't set a limitation also with the different style in barely matters on international events cause there are also slightly different names for all the tricks in freestyle within the different countries.
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I think that the presenter guidelines can be left up to the discretion of the X-style director at each event, rather than create set rules for the presenters.
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I agree. I don’t think a rule is needed for this.
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I agree. I also don't see a need for a rule
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If no one has any other comments regarding this discussion, I will close it.
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Fundamentally I think anything that we consider to be "canonical" to the competition should find its way to the rulebook. That holds regardless if it's about how to judge routines, how to select judges, how the chief judge is supposed to handle ties, etc. We may disagree with each other on what to write in the rulebook but the purpose of this committee is to outline how the competition should be run in the future.
Another thing is that there's a proposal that all participants must be judges too. At Unicon I was asked to be the presenter and didn't judge – there's a question how the presenter should be chosen and if presenters can be competitors (and if they still have to judge). My feeling is I would much rather have the best possible presenters and have them present for all groups – if the best (or chosen) presenter is a participant that person would have a hard time judging. This happened at Unicon and so at the very least I would be interested to hear people's opinion on how this should be handled.
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I think the presenter should not be a competitor - because that person should be present all the time.
Maybe you could have a team of presenters (2?) that ride different styles so they could complement each other.
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I usually have two different presenters, one knowledgeable of freestyle and one knowledgeable of flat. I know that people want to keep the word flat out of discussions, but regardless of this, there will still be flat riders in the competitions. In the ones I have directed, it's usually about half freestylers and half flat riders.
It would make it easier if presenters were not competitors.
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Of course it would be in favor that the presenter is not competing and presenting all the time. But you have to find someone who's willing to do it and knows most of the tricks nad those those are mostly the people who are also competing.