The text above is from a year ago. Just to get some general background.Corky 1 year ago wrote:What is the balance in our slalom world? For me there are some variables to consider, the skill in a region, travel distance, amount of travel, reasonable budget for a racer to put down on travel, reasonable attendance on competitions, planning, spreading the sport.
The World Ranking system is trying to deal with all of this knowing that these things can never be measured perfectly and by that knowing that there are no perfect rankings. Not in any sport. But we have to oversee that and just try to play by some sort of rules and when the results does not balance in the eyes of racers or those interested in the international slalom scene then you change the rules to handle the new situation. The World Ranking Rules are not written in stone. They will change. But are the World Rankings so wrong? Are they so skewed? Are any racers from a specific region obviously favoured or disfavoured?
The WR system makes the racers compete (of course) but it also makes the organizers compete. Some might not like that. And it also wants to give other organizers a chance now and then to attract the better skaters even if they are in regions with a less developed slalom scene.
The WR system also wants to encourage people to travel. And this also for those from places with a more intense slalom scene. Some in hot slalom regions for example might not like that because the balance is working a little bit against them having a large slalom scene. But the idea is to help those regions with a less of a slalom scene also. It’s hard enough for them as it is. If they on top of it all would be the ones we expect to do all the travelling too it is not really helping them on their home ground. And this is a fact even in the current system but at least it tries to balance it in the right direction. They normally have fewer competitions, fewer high statuses to use but maybe the field is a little bit lighter. For me it’s some kind of a balance. And the idea is if the field is lighter it may attract some racers that suddenly think it’s worth the trip. Then they may do themselves a favour, they help the region, and they help spreading slalom outside their own region and by that helps the whole international slalom scene. That’s not to forget in all of this.
For the regions with a lot of high skill slalomers around. They can organize a lot of competitions and they don’t have to travel far and they will easily get many skilled racers and get a lot of high status competitions with very little time and money effort for the local riders. There is not much money in our sport and we who compete do have a limited budget. We don’t have the luxury to travel to more than 5-6 competitions per season. And if you already did that I would say it’s extremely good. The average travels for racers I don’t know. Maybe one could find out by saying a travel is when it takes you more than x hours getting there or by having a distance of x kilometres. Price could be a parameter in this as well. We can never take away the fact that some always have advantages over others that have nothing to do with slalom skills. But we can try to balance it up a little.
But remember the World Ranking is not all. There are many other reasons to go to competitions. Maybe a World Cup, American Cup, European Cup. It could be for the plain and simple reason of fun racing and meeting slalom friends. A nice competition site and you name it. These cups could have other rules of how to deal with things. Actually I think it could be a good idea that they are different, to again come back to the magic word, balance things up.
Sure it is possible to add more statuses to the different regions in the World Ranking. As long as the system keeps its idea of some sort of a world balance. So if we increase statuses then that will force us to also increase the number of minimum events demanded of racers. So it will then be somewhat closer to some high WR statuses for us but we will instead be forced to travel to more competitions. In the long run with a growing world slalom scene this is logical. Are we all ready for it?
Now a pro skater must at least enter 4 high status events during the year (and enter at least 2 disciplines per event). Are we ready to demand 5 events per year? Will a fair world balance gain on this?
I have said this many times before. And each time I think about these changes I feel that sometimes that we are trying to solve regional problems with the world ranking system. Regional problems should be solved with regional series (American Cup, European Cup, aso). Only World balance problems should be solved with the World Ranking system. Do we have a world balance problem? If so let's try to fix it. If not...
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