Judging: difficulty of tricks (variety/volume)
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Started
Two issues were raised in discussion 72 so breaking out the issue of difficulty of tricks to this discussion:
The rules mention that judges should judge skills by their difficulty but don't mention anything about the amount or variety of tricks. Taken at face value that would mean that one rider showing an extremely hard skill (say, handstand coasting) should be ranked higher than other riders showing more skills with a lower difficulty. There's also different styles being displayed and there's no discussion of how judges should consider that.
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My opinion is that variety is a key part of judging how good a rider is and how good a routine is. A rider that can show a lot of different tricks during the routine is in my book ultimately a better rider than one that shows fewer or more similar tricks (as long as they're within the same "band" of tricks). There's obviously a discussion to be had given that some tricks take more time and some combinations allow riders to show off a lot of tricks in quick succession, but in my mind there's no way around wanting to look at the variety of the tricks displayed.
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It's about difficulty and not primary about variety. I always judge the difficulty and keep in mind that it's harder to perform a variety of skills than just focus on similar tricks. If two riders show off skills with similar difficulty the rider with the higher variety wins.
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I agree with Lisa, X-style comes down to difficulty. Variety is a factor to consider when judging, but the essence of x-style judging is on the difficulty of tricks performed.
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X-style is about difficulty. Of course it is more difficult to land 10 tricks than 1 trick if they are the same difficulty. If a riders hands 1 really hard trick and another rider lands 10 easy tricks, then the judges have to decide which run is more difficult in total. I think it's also more difficult to be proficient in a variety of tricks than just many tricks of the style style.
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I don't think there is a need to mention variety in the rules for judging. If we decide to add it, it would have to be carefully explained as to not take away the essence of judging the competition, which comes down to the difficulty.
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I'll join the previous speakers: X-Style is about difficulty. In my opinion variety is rather insignificant, as long as the variety doesn't indicates higher difficulty.
But perhaps we could make it a little clearer in the rules that it is about the difficulty shown as a whole - the "sum" of the difficulty. This would certainly make it clear once again that it is not a matter of showing a single trick that is as difficult as possible, but of presenting a high level of difficulty overall.
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Jan I think that’s good. Could you maybe draft some text for this?
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Same here: it's about difficulty. I would maybe add a sentence about variety being implicit in difficulty.
It's easier/faster to learn similar tricks than learning a completely different one.
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I always find it difficult to formulate rule suggestions or rule texts in English - so if a native speaker or someone else would like to formulate a suggestion, I'm happy to give it to you.
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Here's a crack at it. Not perfect and needs work, but is a start. Anyone have anything to add to make it more clear?
Original:
The judge should rank the riders of the current starting group in order. They should do this by comparing the difficulty of the shown skills. The same skill when completed with higher quality (for example elegant, smooth, or clean) is considered more difficult.
New:
The judge should rank the riders of the current starting group in order. They should do this by comparing the difficulty of the shown skills in each run. When comparing the difficulty of runs, judges should take into consideration the difficulty of each competitor's run as a whole. The same skill when completed with higher quality (for example elegant, smooth, or clean) is considered more difficult.
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Dani,
I think that's fine.
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Also looks good to me. I think this should make it very clear that it is not about a single difficult trick, but about the entire difficulty of the shown run.