Standardising Age Groups (Flatland) (Closed for comments)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
Now in Flatland this might be a bit more interesting.
If we go for
0-9 Kids
10-15 Junior
16-34 Adult
35+ Senior
this leads to a few problems.
First, the kids and junior categories tend to have few riders, so it could mean that all of them might automatically get medals in their age group. Question is: Is that really something we would want to prevent? I would say, think big and expect more young riders to compete in the future so keep those kids/junior age groups separate.
Alternatively we could combine kids and junior in flatland -> 0-15 junior.
I think this could work too but I like the idea of a standardised system for its clarity.
Second, the big question in flatland is: who get's finals? Should every age group have their finals? Probably not, that would be insane.
Should we only have one big expert finals for riders across all ages? I dislike this because I like young riders battling to get the hang of it. (the special thing in flatland being that finals are completely different than prelims)
Maybe we could go for a 'Young' final combining the best riders of Kids and Junior, and the 'Expert' final for Adult and Senior.
Advantages for that: the amount of finals wouldn't change from what it is now. But senior riders would still get a small award for their age group.
So:
age groups:
0-9 Kids
10-15 Junior
16-34 Adult
35+ Senior
small age group awards (without an individual ceremony)
Young final for Kids and Junior
Expert final for Adult and Senior
Might sound messy but I think this could work.
Comment
It is quite rare to have junior competitors that even know how to battle. The concept of battle is a battle more difficult to understand and compete in than going from point A to point B or just doing all your tricks.
So basically what you're proposing is do to exactly like it already is, but give out more medal for more age groups based on final results?
Comment
Yes I think it is pretty close to how it is now.
But it would again be standardised across all urban events, at least age group wise.
And I mean the names would need to change a bit since it's strange to have Junior battles if there's an age group named Junior as well.
(That's why I went with 'Young' finals)
I can see your point with young riders battling. Are you against having battles for juniors at all?
Comment
If you want to go standard for everything urban, then yes. I don't see why juniors would have a flatland finals, but not jumps, street, or trials.
Comment
Copied from the Street discussion about this:
First of all, young finals would always take a lot of extra time, so I would only consider them if they have some big advantage. In Flatland I would argue they do! (more stated below), in Street, Trial, Jumps they don't.
In Flatland you can pretty easily have some battles for young riders without much organisation needed. (ie. not building stuff for it)
The main reason though why I would like young riders to have their own final is that the finals format of battling is completely different from prelims. Getting young riders to be able to participate in that would prepare them for their time in adult.
This doesn't apply to trial, street or jumps, where the finals format is pretty much the same as in prelims.
(and honestly, young riders battling just leads to them feeling awesome which boosts motivation. I experience that a lot with our young riders. They are really motivated to 1v1 battle someone, but they don't really care about having a street or trials final)
Comment
To bump this topic too then:
What do you guys think about standardising age groups im flatland as well?
How would you go about finals for junior riders?
To state my idea again:
0-9 Kids
10-15 Junior
16-34 Adult
35+ Senior
Young final for Kids and Junior
Expert final for Adult and Senior
Comment
I agree with standard age groups.
I also agree that flatland finals timewise and setup wise is much easier to conduct that street trials finals. Jumps could also be in that category.
Street often requires many different obstacles compared to what adult males or even adult females do. Trials similar
I don't have any specific through about whether or not we have to keep finals or not for juniors consistent across EVERY urban event. Doesn't really bother me either way.
Comment
I also agree with standard age groups across all urban disciplines.
And I also think that junior finals should be consistent across all urban events - having them for all or none.
I think junior finals would be nice to have. And we also have them for a lot of other non-urban disciplines.
I don't think that building of the obstacles would be a major problem as the female finals probably require similar ones. The only problem that I see is time
Comment
how about we vote on standard age groups first and then try and work out whether we have finals for every age group separately? We all agree on the age groups
Comment
Sounds good to me
Comment
OLD
11D.4 Categories
There are no mimimum categories other than male and female. If there are less than three females or less than three males overall, the male and female categories are merged.
New
11D.4 Categories
There are no mimimum categories other than male and female. If there are less than three females or less than three males overall, the male and female categories are merged. If age groups are included they will be set as 0-9 (Kids), 10-15 (Junior), 16-34 (Adult), 35+ (Senior).
Comment
Woops this is the street one.
Flatland
Old
10D.4 Categories
Male and female competitions should be offered in each of the following categories: Junior Expert (0-14), and Expert (15+). The Advanced category is optional however it is not allowed at Unicon. If there are less than 3 Junior Expert competitors, they may choose whether to compete in Expert or Advanced. If there are less than three females or less than three males overall, the male and female categories may be merged.
New
10D.4 Categories
Male and female competitions should be offered in Junior Expert (0-15) and Expert (16+) categories. If age group winners are included, they will be set as 0-9 (Kids), 10-15 (Junior), 16-34 (Adult) and 35+ (Senior). To reduce running time of competitions, if there are less than three females or less than three males overall, the male and female categories may be merged.
The advanced category may not be run at world championships but may be appropriate for lower level competitions. If there are less than 3 Junior Expert riders competing, they may choose whether to compete in the Expert (or Advanced) category.
Comment
Steven, this sounds good to me, thanks for preparing it. Just one comment for the last part; at Unicon there is no advanced category in Flatland.
As for the finals for different categories:
In Trials and Speed Trials, we have Male and Female finals. It is not an expert-only final (which means that of course riders who are in Junior or Senior age group will also go into the final if they make it to the best 6-10 riders (depending on how many goes to finals). I would not change this, to organize Junior Male, optionally Kids Male and Adult Male finals and the same in Female would be way tooooo time consuming and would take away from the prestige of the overall title. I would do it the same in Jumps as well. The Final is for the best overall Female and Male riders.
In Flatland and Street, it depends on the age groups. If we make 4 age groups in Flatland and Street as well, then I honestly wouldn't think that having Kids and Adult finals would be a good addition to these events. As long as we have only Junior Expert and Expert categories in Flatland and Street, a Junior Expert Final is great in my opinion.
I know that if we do it this way, then we have 4 age groups and 1 final in Trials, Speed Trials and Jumps; and 2 age groups and 2 finals in Street and Flatland, but I think that this would be ideal, because:
- we already have a couple of age groups in Trials, Speed Trials and Jumps; and the original idea was to standardize it
- I don't think age groups have to be the same in Trials and Flatland / Street; because the way of the scoring/judging system of these events are completely different. It is important to have clean and standardized age group limits for all disciplines; but they don't need to be the same for all disciplines.
Comment
Just to clarify, are we differentiating the categories competed in flatland from the "age group winners"
I.e. we could still hold only two categories of compeition, but the highest ranked age group "Kid"s and "Junior"s in the "Junior expert category gets age champion medals also.
Or are you saying have two age categories medals in flatland 0-15 and 16+
Comment
I believe if age groups end up being standardized by an IUF committee across all disciplines you will likely get age brackets imposed on flatland and street either way.
We can always implement our standard age brackets across all urban and jumps but still only run two competitions for flatland and street junior and senior.
All you would need to do is provide age medals to the highest ranking ages in each group.
Say you get a Junior Expert comp at unicon that has the below riders in it.
Greg 8yr
Bob 12r
James 14yr
John 7yr
George 15yr
Andreas 14yr
William 5yr
Dale 6yr
Philip 8yr
Aaron 6yr
If they do preliminary runs they all get ranked to decide who gets to final battles right?
So all the guys have rankings after prelims.
If finals is 4 riders and their final rankings are
1st James 14yr
4th John 7yr
2nd George 15yr
4th Andreas 14yr
John gets the age medal for kids (0-9 yrs) because he got ranked highest of all the 0-9s. Second and third for kids (0-9yr) goes to whichever 0-9 year olds were second and third highest after prelims
The Junior (10-15) age medals go to James (1st) George(2nd) Andreas (3rd).
The overall Junior Expert medals go to James (1st), George (2nd) and Andreas (3rd) as that was the final placings.
Even if the finals end differently and their final rankings are
1st James 14yr
2nd John 7yr
3rd George 15yr
4th Andreas 14yr
John gets the age medal for kids (0-9 yrs) because he got ranked highest of all the 0-9s. Second and third for kids (0-9yr) goes to whichever 0-9 year olds were second and third highest after prelims
The Junior (10-15) age medals go to James (1st) George(2nd) Andreas (3rd) for being the highest ranked 10-15 yr olds.
The overall Junior Expert medals go to James (1st), John (2nd) and Andreas (3rd) as that was the final placings.
Comment
Mark, not sure if you are talking about categories or age groups there.
My proposal was to have age groups Kids 0-9, Junior 10-15, Adult 16-34, Senior 35+ with finals for Young Expert (including riders from Kids and Junior) and Expert (for Adult and Senior).
This way the only change is more age group rewards, to give more recognition or support to especially the very young and old riders which now might decide to not even enter the competition.
Are we talking about the same thing? Because I don't think we ever really wanted to have finals for every age group.
Comment
Ian, thanks for clarifying, I understand what you meant now.
I believe we should look at the history of competitors who entered the Flatland competition at previous Unicons, to see if there is actually a demand for all these categories (as there should at least 3, but rather 5 competitors in each age-group). At Unicon 19, we had to merge Junior Expert Female and Expert Female categories, but I can imagine that for males there might be a demand for Adult and Kids age-groups.
Comment
Since we are planning on standardizing age groups across disciplines, we should not check past competitions in flatland only.
Age group awards should be awarded however few particitants competed. If there is only one kid younger than 9, reward him with the age group medal! He is the best of all the riders, that didn't compete.
For medals, nothing changes, since there is only a Young Final and an Expert Final. Same as now.
The possibility to merge those finals is up for discussion. That is not the point in this thread here though.
Comment
Another point: we should not respond to the number of competitors only, we should set up the rules so that we get the number of competitors we want in the future.
By having an age group with a low number of riders, we might just encourage other riders of that age to compete next time.
i.e. having more kids and senior riders active.
Comment
Here is the history of flatland participants for the past two Unicons and three ECUs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eUYIW2pOG6s3Uu9QNeMjk4fNhIPbMCcQVCSitz4fIWM
You can download the file if you want to do your own calculations.
Here is a graph of female flat participants.
Here is a graph of male flat participants.
Comment
I personally like this idea in theory; however it is now too late.
There is still an option to include this at Unicon 20; the IUF board and Rulebook Chair would need to approve.