Why use the Qualifying Time in the elimination rounds?

[Donald Campbell]

cool
i am looking forward meeting and racing you in morro.
three thumbs up for jack

[Chris Eggers]

Slalom Week 2005 will be sanctioned by World Cup Skateboarding.

The way to go Jack.....how did that come about and how does this "sanctioning" look like?
What are the benefits?

[Jack Smith]

Donald,

I have used the equal placing system in almost every race I have organized.

I will be using it during Slalom Week 2005.

Slalom Week 2005 will be sanctioned by World Cup Skateboarding.

[Donald Campbell]

dear jack and jani
why didn't you change this erratic system a long time ago?

[Jack Smith]

I have been saying this for years.

You cannot use Q-times to determine a racer's placing in the elimination rounds.

When you lose in the round of 8 for instance, you along with three other racers have
not defeated anyone in that round. All four racers should receive equal 5th.

There are too many factors in qualifying to base a racers placement in the elmination round on his Q-time. Racers not making it to the round of 16 or 32, of course will be ranked by their Q-time.

[Eric Brammer]

I never did like that system. Carpetbaggers lurk. Worse, some of the Very Best Racing is in that middle-of-the-pack grouping, where riders of more equal abilities tend to pool up.
What it should be is 'luck of the draw' once one 'heat' is done. Take the riders that advance, by bib #, draw them in pairs, next heat is settled. No "Bye's", no carpetbagging, just Racing! Putting the low guy agaist the top guy and bracketing it so that a 'non-race' occurs is plain silly, and it's discouraging for at least one competitor per round, and for spectators. You might as well ask the top-most racer before each run which lane they prefer,oh, and put slower bearings into the opponent's wheels. I've dealt with FIS in Snowboarding for way too long, and they do silly things like this too. There's been times I wish I'd thought to bring Sex Wax along for the Official's skis... But I digress; It's about Racing, not stacking the order to quickly weed out the 'better' riders. A draw of bib #'s per advance(example, from Semis to Finals;not per heat) seems the best means I can think of to create an unbiased Race Event.

Oh, and I think Indy Cars should race at Indy, and F-1 cars should race at Sebring....

[Jonathan Harms]

I don't know how or when the practice started, but I'd bet it originated long before Dan came up with that spreadsheet. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that it started from a desire to keep things simple. If you've ever organized a race, or helped, you know how much it takes just to run the races themselves, and how little time there is for rethinking or recalculating. Adding extra calculations to the process would add to the headaches of organizing the race.

Having to re-rank the riders after every elimination round kind of makes sense, but is it really any more fair or accurate than the qualifying-time method? Let's say you qualify 16th and you know you have to ride like crazy just to have a chance against #1. (In other words, the speed of your opponent sometimes does matter.) You may end up with a faster time than, say, the 9th qualifier who only has to race the #8 qualifier. Does that really mean you deserve that higher placing? I think there's some element of arbitrariness either way you do it. You're defining the higher placement by saying that one person ended up with a faster time at SOME point in the process.

I'm not sure which is better, defining it as an earlier placement (qualifying) or a later one. It does seem that the current system requires a bit less effort, that's all.

[Pat Chewning]

One argument for using the Qual times is that the head-to-head racing is a TRUE/FALSE outcome. So people who are largely mis-matched (#1 vs #32) are likely to be just cruising along easily (#1) or going all-out for a miracle (#32) with the likely DQ or cone-plowing result.

Some people could propose that this makes for better racing since it's just one guy against another -- so elemental and simple.


One thing that might make for better racing all-around could be:

4 runs in qualifying instead of 2 -- More chances to improve, more racing for most racers, require 1 run from EACH lane instead of "best time" from either lane to qualify. For the placings from 9th to Nth place, the qual times are all that count. For the placings from 1st to 8th -- normal man-on-man bracketing.

It might make the Qualifying more interesting. It would definitely make the finals go faster and more intense.

[Heiko Schöller]

This is the point. I have a good Example. Christoph Baumann qualified 16th in Paris and came against Luca. Luca won but the advantage was so little that Christoph had the best time in this cut of 16th. He is 16th but his time was 9 or 10th place for sure...

I asked Chris Hart in Grüningen why they doing it like this system. He said "hey I don't like it either but we only have this Excel sheet and we can't change it".

[Jani Soderhall]

We had that discussion in Grüningen again and everyone said normally in every cut the new times from the cut must count and not the times from the Qualification.

Heiko,

I've been waiting so long for this to come up again. I agree with you 100%. I tried to bring it up for discussion 1-2 years ago (maybe offline, back then), but I couldn't gather any momentum for this idea. Maybe nobody had suffered then. I did in Hannover. I qualified poorly (as usual because of no practice at the site) then got my equipment dialled in and improved in the racing part. With your proposed change I would have improved from 7th into 5th place.

As it stands now if you're going to loose anyway, there's nothing to fight for. Imagine someone who qualifies 16:th. What chance does he have to beat no 1? None! But at least with such a good racer next to him, maybe he could do a super run and climb a few places. Even up to 9:th - quite an improvement and really a cool thing for the whole event.

/Jani

[Chris Eggers]

I got it, maybe Dan can answer himself. He also speaks German very good by the way, just in case you want somthing special, but I think he will understand what you mean.
Personally, I think the racers fastest time achieved during a race should count to his final placing, but considering his outcome in the head to head thus meaning if he goes down in the cut to 4 he may not get better than 5th.

[Heiko Schöller]

On all big races most of the guys use the nice Excel sheet from Dan Gesmer to count the cones and the times results and whatever...this really works good and is easy to understand but I and many racers think that there is big mistake in this sheet.

Example: Round of 8

4 people advances to the Round of 4 and the other 4 are out. Who get's the 5th place? The guy who had the best Qualification time? Why that?

Maybe another racer was much faster in that round of 8 but the new time doesn't count...

We had that discussion in Grüningen again and everyone said normally in every cut the new times from the cut must count and not the times from the Qualification.

They only do it because of the Excel sheet? How stupid is that? Maybe I'm wrong what do you guys think about that?

I hope everyone understands what I'm talking about becasue it's not so easy to translate and explain from german to english...