(New Street) Amount of finalists (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
As Mark mentioned in another thread:
At some point we should also discuss how many riders qualify for the final. I hope this is not off-topic here as the number of runs determine the length of the comp in general, and therefore the number of riders we could have in the final. I believe the system we work on right now would easily allow to have 8 or maaaaybe even more riders in the finals.
As discussed at unicon for several finals, having too many competitors in finals defeats the purpose of have qualifications + finals. Here are examples
High Jump qualified results
1. 130cm
2. 130cm
3. 128cm
4. 126cm
5. 126cm
6. 118cm
7. 114cm
8. 114cm
9. 112cm
10..
There is a big gap between place 5th and 6th. There's no point in having more than 5 finalists in this competition as it's pretty obvious the 6th place would finish last and wouldn't really be part of the finals competition. The 6th rider would do his highest jump and them everybody while other riders would start the competition at the 6th place qualifying height.
The same applies for trials and street. You see a big gap in points, and that's where usually it makes sense to choose the amount of finalists.
Sometimes it's 4, other time 5 or 6, or 8. It really depends on the qualifications.
Just in case some people say that sometime you don't land your tricks and you underperform in qualifications, that's part of the competition. For example it's not because hypothetically Mike Taylor misses 3 times his jump at 120cm that we should still allow him to win or go to finals.
I used high jump to explain my point, as it's more simple and easier to understand, but it also works the same for street even though it's a bit more complex.
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That being said, I think we could set a minimum and a maximum.
Example; minimum of 4 finalists and maximum of 8. Unicon must have at least 5 finalists.
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Stating the obvious. If a minimum and maximum are set, it needs to be stated also that the number of finalists needs to be decided on before the competition starts.
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Well, before the finals starts, obviously. But you won't know until you get results from the qualifications.
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Wait, you actually want to decide the number of finalists after the prelims? When the specific riders and points are known? That seems a bit arbitrary...
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There are pros and cons about making the decision after the prelims. Of course you can be 100% sure that the decision is not biased by anything if it is made before, however what Emile described in the starter of this discussion definitely worth considering. That shows that you may be able to find the perfect number of finalists after you have the prelim results ready, as most of the time you can clearly see where to put the line - especially if you have minimum / maximum amount of finalists given.
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Ian is right in that you REALLY do open yourself up to a lot of abuse if you decide the number of finalists after knowing the points.
If you have a rider who misses out but may been in the vicinity of the last rider chosen will you open yourself up to online abuse. Surprisingly enough some riders are very vocal when they disagree with judging... You would need some formula that was ALWAYS followed if you were going to do this I think.
Something like take the top 5 and look at the average difference in points between each placing and then the first rider who has a greater difference than this is the cut off for making it. I have no idea if that would stand up with actual results but just trying to provide a way that you wont get abused for knocking someone out because you dislike them not because they weren't good enough.
Or you need to have something where you release the points but not rider names and have a non biased person decide where the cutoff should be after looking at the points.
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Just so you know, that's how things have been going on for trials for street slopestyle trials and high jump for years.
There's already measure in place. You can't disagree with a judge decision, only against errors in calculation of points.
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This is how it has been? Wait. So it's written in the rulebook somewhere?!
I would then say, this needs to be changed to something solid. If we want it to be decided after the qualification, then there needs to be a rule that determines where the cutoff is. This can't be done by a judge knowing the names. Imagine a situation where Mike screws his highjump qualification because of whatever and is in the place right after the obvious big point-gap cutoff. You know he would fit the final, but could you let him through? What if a similar thing happened to a no-name rider who went under the radar? This is way too subjective.
So if a decision after prelims is wanted and between 4 to 8 riders should always advance, a rule could be implemented that the biggest point gap between place 4 and 8 is always the cutoff. But don't put a rule in that lets a judge decide that. This is meant to be trouble...
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The judge don't decide who goes to final. They don't get to see the total score even, only the Chief judge does. And the decision would be taken by the event director.
Ian, the "gap" exactly would prevent what you mentioned. Because you cut where the score/point gap is, not with names.
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Current rulebook states
Street
"The top 5 or 6 riders will be chosen to participate in the finals"
Trials
"When the competition has been completed, the top riders for male and female would compete in the final round for the championship. The minimum number of top riders would be 6 for each male and female with the upper limit up to the host" for trials
High Jump
No mention whatsoever
Slopestyle
Slopestyle doesn't officially exists.
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1. Mark Fabian 126cm
1. Mike Taylor 122cm
3. Armand Martinez 122cm
3. Markus Pirtschke 122cm
5. Thomas Bruneau 118cm
5. Emile Mathieu 118cm
7. Jerome Du Pasquier 116cm
7. Kornél Auth 116cm
9. Pierre Sturny 114cm
9. Jonas Jorgensen 114cm
9. Tim Desmet 114cm
These are the results form prelim high jump at Unicon. The finals should have been the top 4 riders, as that's where the "gap" was. The director choose to make the cut at 6 riders because 4 isn't too many. Either way could have worked, but then if you have 7 riders pre-decided you need to take 8 because there was a tie for 7th place in prelim... or you need to make a tie-breaker between the 7th place riders to know how goes to finals.
Even though this decision was cutting out Pierre, Jonas and Tim who we know have all jumped 130cm + before, what was looked at were the numbers, not the names.
Here is trials
1. Mark 154 pts
2. Pierre 151 pts
3. Erik Winterfeldt 147pts
4. Tim Desmet 144 pts
5. Markus 113 pts
6. Jonas 109 pts
7. Christian 87 pts
7. Mario 87 pts
7. Ondrej 87 pts
10. Celien 84 pts
11. Jakob 81 pts
11. Mike 81 pts
The decision taken by the director here was to take 12 top riders. You can clearly see a gap between the 4th and 5th riders, and then between the 6th and 7th riders. Just like high jump, could have been a finals of 4, or 6. That's what would have made the most sense if you look at the results IMO. Once again, you're looking at scores, not names. If someone under performs, or over perform, that's part of the competition.
For street
1. Mimo 25
2. Tim 30
3. Waylon 33
4. Kornél 33
5. Chris 34
6. Mario 47
7. Pierre 57
8. B.O.B 76
9. Dekky 83
10. Walker 100
...
Here there's a gap between 5th and 6th place, and then a gap between 7th and 8th place. Rules say you have to choose between 5 or 6 riders. 6 were chosen, but it could have very well been 5.
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With all this information, I think we either have two options. Either we define what "the gap" is, and we keep a minimum and a maximum number of riders to finals. This makes for more interesting finals that make more sense. OR we take a fixed amount of riders for finals for the sake of consistency. This is good because it's consistent, but then it doesn't accommodate different size events and sometimes will make people go to finals even though they don't really belong.
For many international competition, you net to make a qualifying time of x.xx seconds if you want to compete in 100m in a major event, or jump x.xx meters in high jump to qualify to compete in major events too. Unicycling is very small, and we do not have competition around the world all the time. The qualifying score is set at the world championships, rather than weeks or months before because of the restriction due to the size of the sport.
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I like the wording:
'When the competition has been completed, the top riders for male and female would compete in the final round for the championship'
If you've ever been an event director you'll understand. Also, as Emile has pointed out, it allows for a more evenly weighted final competition. You really don't want someone who shouldn't really be in a final competing. It makes them look really bad and it's not good for the audience. Competitions are a test of who is best on the day. If you screw up in prelims, that's rough but tough luck.
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The only thing I strongly advise against, is choosing the finalists by hand after the prelims have finished. That might be how it was done in the past, but I think it wasn't stated clearly like this. It is meant to be trouble. We need a clear rule that says exactly where the cutoff should be.
Something like this:
General minimum and maximum number of finalists in any event: 2 - 8.
Any event organizer can then choose and publish their own min/max from this, before their prelims start. For a small event maybe 2 - 4. For Unicon 5 - 10.
After the prelims are done, one rule like the following will be applied to the scores.
The gap with the highest score difference between the highest and lowest place inside the min/max is do be used as the cutoff point. If there are multiple gaps with the same difference, the last one is to be used. (Last one, to avoid cutting off good riders, because the differences throughout were minimal)
A system like this would make sure competitors know in advance how many people will possibly reach finals and exactly how this is determined. I would always prefer this over a judge subjectively choosing where to cut off. With or without knowing the names corresponding to the points.
An example (For a Unicon, 5-8 might advance):
1. Frank 135 pts
2. Peter 133 pts
3. Ernest 132pts
4. Theodor 130 pts
-
5. Marcus 128 pts
6. John 114 pts
7. Christoph 110 pts
8. Zach 99 pts
9. Oliver 98 pts
-
10. Paul 86 pts
Considering the gaps between places 5-9, so the cutoff could be after place 8.
The highest gap is between 5 and 6. Done. 5 people advance.
1. Frank 135 pts
2. Peter 133 pts
3. Ernest 132pts
4. Theodor 130 pts
-
5. Marcus 129 pts
6. John 127 pts
7. Christoph 125 pts
8. Zach 123 pts
9. Oliver 122 pts
-
10. Paul 121 pts
this would lead to a cutoff after place 8, because of multiple 2point gaps, the last one is used.
Could something like this work?
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Correction, because of two mistakes. I can't calculate.
1. For Unicon 5-8 finalists.
2. second example: cutoff after place 7.
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In the first example, the gap is clearly between place 5 and 6. The top 5 riders would advance to go finals.
In the second example, there is no clean gap and I would just use the maximum amount of allowed finalists.
That being said. Having a minimum of 2-4 finalists makes no sense. Already if there are less than 5 or 6 riders you should proceed to finals directly as there is no need for prelims. Secondly, depending on the discipline, you don't really want more than 6 riders in finals. Usually the gap is around there and it makes the finals loose momentum as it's greatly stretched the competition. You can put a maximum of 8, but 10 in a finals in just too much, especially for street.
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Ive tried to work out a way to mathematically have a rule that organises the cut off but currently I havent come up with anything that appears to work in all instances of score variations.
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As mentioned above, a minimum and maximum is definitely needed.
A mathematical rule for the cut-off won't work in real life I think so just a min/max is still the best option I think.
I like the a final between 4-8 riders...& I think it is then up to the organization to decide where they draw the line, but at least they won't be allowed to overflow the final with to many people (a bit like at unicon with 12finalist in trial) or to less people.
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I agree