Standardizing Age Groups across Urban Disciplines (in case the Age Group committee does not come to a general solution)
Comments about this discussion:
Started
Even though there is an Age Group committee working on standardizing age groups across all disciplines,
I would like to propose standard age groups across Urban disciplines temporarily, in case the Age Group committee cannot find a general solution or until it does.
This would also serve as the Trials/Urban view on the topic of age groups for the Age Group committee.
In the last rulebook committee 2023 (which couldn't be finished) Marie did some research into where the ideal cutoff between Junior and Adult should be. We also tried to implement an additional age group above Senior (35+). We came to the conclusion that the following age groups would be ideal.
Kids (0-9)
Junior (10-14)
Adult (15-34)
Senior (35-49)
Master (50+)
Since the committees were never finished, these weren't officially introduce to the rulebook.
I have however used these exact age groups for the last few years on all of our events. (German Championships '23/'24 & Winter EUC '23/'24).
They seemed to be appropriate and the additional Master category did have some competitors, who got some recognition because of it.
I therefore proposed to change the Trials age groups to the above (until the age group section in the Trials part of the rulebook will be overhauled completely if and when the Age Group committee comes to a general rule.
Currently:
Kids (0-9)
Junior (10-15)
Adult (16-34)
Senior (35+)
New:
Kids (0-9)
Junior (10-14)
Adult (15-34)
Senior (35-49)
Master (50+)
Comment
I would say that I am one of those persons who have been fighting for many years to finally have an IUF Age Group Committee to standardize things across the different disciplines - so I really hope that the committee will come up with some real results in the end.
However, even if the committee ends up proposing standardized base age groups, it will be up to the individual areas to decide which of these age groups make sense for the disciplines in that area. It is therefore not entirely wrong to consider at this level which age groups would make sense - this can then also be fed directly into the discussions at the Age Group Committee.
I think the proposed change is basically very good, especially the change of the junior age group to 10-14 years would lead to a clear standardization (even without a decision in the Age Group Committee), since in other areas such as freestyle currently everything up to 14 years is considered junior.
In the kids area, I would like to point out that in all track races the age group 0-10 years rides on smaller unicycles, which is why this age group would certainly remain if it were to be standardized. The question would therefore be whether a division of 0-10 and then 11-14 would also be imaginable for the Urban area?
This would also allow us to achieve a significant level of standardization even without a decision in the Age Group Committee.
Comment
"The question would therefore be whether a division of 0-10 and then 11-14 would also be imaginable for the Urban area?" - I would say that it does not make too much sense. I understand the benefit for kids here, but as a event organizer, its already hard to fill all age groups, and to manage the huge amount of medals and the time for the award ceremony.
The proposal is 5 age groups, times 3 medals, times two genders is 30 medals only for one discipline that need to be produced and awarded.
I am ok with that amount, but any more is ridiculous.
So +1 for standards, but within a meaningful amount.
Comment
> "The question would therefore be whether a division of 0-10 and then 11-14 would also be imaginable for the Urban area?" - I would say that it does not make too much sense. I understand the benefit for kids here, but as a event organizer, its already hard to fill all age groups, and to manage the huge amount of medals and the time for the award ceremony.
The current rules define the groups 0-9 and 10-15, and it has already been proposed to change this to 0-9 and 0-14, which would standardize the upper limit for the junior category with other disciplines. So my question only referred to the upper limit of the Kids category (9 vs. 10) in order to achieve standardization with other disciplines. This would therefore by no means lead to more age groups.
I can understand that the age groups seemed too much for small events - but the rulebook still allows age groups to be combined if there are too few participants. And even if I am a big fan of giving the organizers as much freedom as possible in terms of their organizational decisions, I think it is important that there are always certain age groups to prevent, for example, 10-year-olds from being judged together with 30-year-olds, as it is simply not possible to make a meaningful sporting comparison here.
Comment
I do like the age groups like Ian said
Kids (0-9)
Junior (10-14)
Adult (15-34)
Senior (35-49)
Master (50+)
however I do feel like 16+ should fit better to also get closer to the toughts of the age group commitee. In other spots you also have to be 16 to compeet at big events (or even 18 in the netherlands)