Awarding points based on how far riders progress on lines
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Started
In the other discussion "Makeing finals more entertaining for the audience" we came to the aspect of awarding points based on how far riders progress on lines. Mark suggested to open a seperate discussion for this topic to open it up a bit more in detail - so here we have the seperate discussion.
I will repeat what I already wrote in the other discussion.
Last year at the German Championships Trial I had a similar idea as Christian proposed in the other discussion: To award points based on how far riders progress on lines.
I had the feeling that in the final in particular the distinction between a line completely completed or a line not completed (even taking into account the pedal grabs) was insufficient, especially for very long lines. The idea was therefore to see if it would work to divide the lines into zones, as in bouldering, for example, and award points for completing a zone. I don't think this has been tested yet, but I would be really interested to see how such a concept would be appreciated by riders in practice.
The idea is probably only something for finals, at least that's where I'd most likely see it, and I'd like to see it tried out at a competition.
What do you think about such a system?
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I would suggest trying this out at some event to see how it could work and then this can be a discussion for the next rulebook committee round.
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The idea was not intended to be included in the rulebook right now, but only to discuss what others might think of the idea and whether there might be competitions that would like to try out such a system.
But the discussions here are rather less intense :D
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I am in to give it a try! maybe lines should be a little longer then? (some lines in finals are a bid short so might be hard for the zone section).
what about adding 3 zones into a line? and mark does clearly so riders know easy where the zone is. Ian if you need help you know you can text me :)
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Hey hey :)
I kept this idea in my head during Summer EUC'25 last week, and I have some comments for it with fresh experience. For the record, we did not use this rule, but I reviewed the results if we did. I will try to keep it short.
My points:
- The Trials Event Director is already one of the busiest positions of all Event Directors. We want to avoid putting too much extra work on them, and to require them to set up a scoring system for each line in the Finals is too much in my opinion. Also, super hard to describe how to segment each section to give points after completing a segment. Suggestion: make 1 "checkpoint" per line, not more. It should be more or less the first obstacle after the rider passed at least 50% of the line (in terms of difficulty and/or length). So if the rider passes the tricky part of the line, but misses the end, they get the checkpoint at least.
- Do you get points for passing these checkpoints? Like the same points you get for completing a line? In my opinion, the answer to this is no. And the reason why is that I firmly believe that completing 1 line properly should worth more than for example passing 4 checkpoints aka. half-finishing 4 lines. So if you ask me, if someone passes a checkpoint they could get awarded like 0,1 or even 0,01 points - this is to make sure that noone would win the competition without completing any lines over someone who at least finished 1 section fair and square.
So technically it would only have an effect on tie breaks - which are already a very rare thing with the pedal grab scoring + time stamp system.
This Summer EUC, having this rule could have affected the Female Trials Finals results - the first 2 riders had the same scores, but the timestamp of the last completed line decided the ranking between them. If we had a system like this one in effect, it is possible that the results would have been different. And then it comes down to the question: what's worth a higher ranking: finishing the lines in a shorter amount of time, or being close to finish another line, but without full completion.
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Hey Mark,
thank you very much for your feedback and the thoughts you put into this at the Summer EUC.
> The Trials Event Director is already one of the busiest positions of all Event Directors. We want to avoid putting too much extra work on them, and to require them to set up a scoring system for each line in the Finals is too much in my opinion. Also, super hard to describe how to segment each section to give points after completing a segment.
I can totally understand that. In any case, itwould require additional effort to think about segments and take them into account in the lines.
This naturally raises questions such as: Would such a system be conceivable as an optional system? Perhaps also optional for individual lines that are particularly long or have several key points? Does everything really have to depend on the event director, or is there perhaps a way to relieve them of some of the workload?
Overall, however, I think that in the vast majority of cases, one “checkpoint” per line would certainly be sufficient. So if this system is to be further developed and tested, I would suggest using just one “checkpoint” for now and not more.
> Do you get points for passing these checkpoints? Like the same points you get for completing a line? In my opinion, the answer to this is no. And the reason why is that I firmly believe that completing 1 line properly should worth more than for example passing 4 checkpoints aka. half-finishing 4 lines.
I think it would be justified to award points for reaching the “checkpoint” if the lines really allow for it. With 3 points for an entire line, 1 point for the “checkpoint” might be a bit much... but I think if, for example, someone completes the first key point in 6 lines and someone else “only” completes one line, then in my opinion it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to consider both of them to be roughly equal.
> this is to make sure that noone would win the competition without completing any lines over someone who at least finished 1 section fair and square.
I would consider it extremely unlikely that someone who doesn't complete a line would win in the end, even if they got 0.5 points for a “checkpoint” everywhere, or do you really see any danger in that? I think that if someone completes a line, they will also complete the “checkpoints” in other lines and thus get more points than someone who only completes the “checkpoints.”
> So technically it would only have an effect on tie breaks - which are already a very rare thing with the pedal grab scoring + time stamp system.
Yes, such a system would definitely be a tie-breaking system. But one that, in my opinion, offers more than the current system.
If we look at the results of the last Unicon, for example, eight men managed a maximum of two lines, two of them only one – some didn't even attempt much more than that because they knew they wouldn't be able to complete the lines. With a “checkpoint” on the line, perhaps more participants would have attempted another line, which would have made the competition even more interesting for the competitors and spectators.
It was similar at the last German Championship (where I came up with the idea of partial points for part of the line together with some of the participants). Such a system would (probably) not affect the top places, but it would have the potential to make the competition a little more exciting for spectators and participants, as participants might attempt lines that they know they will not be able to complete.
At the same time, there would be a few more options when building lines, as there would be less risk of making a line so difficult that almost no one would attempt it if a “checkpoint” would make a part of the line possible for a larger field of participants.