13B.5: Optimization of qualification rules
Comments about this discussion:
Started
The rules read:
13B.5 Number of Attempts
For both the preliminary and final round, the maximum number of attempts per rider at any one distance is three. Attempts can be made at any provided distance and riders may skip distances as they choose. If a rider attempts any distance, they must successfully complete it before attempting a higher distance. However each attempt must be at the same or higher distance. This means that a rider cannot attempt a longer distance, fail, and then attempt a shorter distance. The best successfully completed attempt is the rider's result. In addition, for the preliminary round riders have maximum of 12 total attempts to complete their best performance.
In my opinion, this rule should be revised to improve the overall competition process and to make it more attractive for both athletes and spectators. Therefore, I suggest introducing fixed qualification heights or distances for final rounds, clearly communicated in advance. Implementing this adjustment would yield the following benefits:
- Efficient Energy Management: Athletes could better plan their attempts and conserve energy by avoiding unnecessary attempts at higher heights.
- More Attractive Finals: Fixed qualification standards typically result in finals featuring higher and more challenging jumps, making the competition more exciting and spectacular.
- Reduction of Unnecessary Waiting Times: Clear qualification criteria eliminate the current uncertainty and speculation regarding the heights or distances needed for finals. This makes the overall competition more efficient and transparent.
Such a concept is already successfully used in other sports, such as athletics in high jump and pole vault, where starting heights and qualification standards are explicitly set, and ski jumping, where qualification distances for final rounds are clearly communicated.
If, despite these clear standards, an insufficient number of athletes achieve the specified qualification height, the next lower successful heights could automatically be considered to fill all final positions.
Thus, the rule could be adapted as follows, for example:
.... In addition, for the preliminary round, riders have maximum of 12 total attempts to complete their best performance. a qualification height/distance will be set for the final round. Riders achieving this qualification do not need to attempt higher heights/distances further. If fewer riders achieve this qualification than required, the next lower successful heights/distances will be used to fill the remaining final spots. Additionally, an entry height/distance will be defined, removing the limit of 12 attempts, allowing riders to improve their performance significantly during the competition.
Comment
I see an extremely big problem with this concept for our sport: in contrast to the other sports mentioned, we don't actually have a real qualifying round, instead there are age group competitions (sometimes referred to as preliminary round) and a final with the best eight of all age groups.
With the proposed concept, age group rankings as we have them at the moment would no longer be possible, as they are currently not just about qualifying for a final, but about a separate ranking. The proposed concept would therefore lead to quite far-reaching changes in the age group rankings.
- More Attractive Finals: Fixed qualification standards typically result in finals featuring higher and more challenging jumps, making the competition more exciting and spectacular.
To be honest, I don't see the connection - why does a fixed qualification lead to higher/further jumps in the final? I think everyone who is in a final tries to do their best there. Why does it make a difference whether you have achieved a fixed qualification or are in the top eight/six/whatever is announced?
- Reduction of Unnecessary Waiting Times: Clear qualification criteria eliminate the current uncertainty and speculation regarding the heights or distances needed for finals. This makes the overall competition more efficient and transparent.
I wouldn't call the current system intransparent if it is known beforehand that the best eight/six/whatever is announced will go through to the final.
Whether the competition will really become more efficient as a result of the proposed change can at least be doubted. Of course, some athletes would stop in the preliminary round after qualifying and the preliminaries might be shortened somewhat as a result - but presumably significantly more riders would reach the final and this would take longer. For all those who also make it to the final, the competition will be longer and there will be additional waiting times (namely the time until the final).
Of course, we can consider changing the entire scoring concept for the jumping disciplines, but there are numerous questions associated with this, which we should all discuss and answer in the rules. These include, for example
- How should qualification for the final be determined? We would need something here that works reasonably well from small local competitions to Unicon.
- What height/distance will be used for starting in the final? The qualifying height/width?
- (depending on the previous point) Can someone jump higher/further than the qualification in the preliminaries?
Your proposal also removes the 12-jump limit for qualification, which I don't think is practicable - we used this principle for years before the 12-jump rule was introduced and it made the competitions take ages because particularly weak riders jumped extremely often because they started low and then increased in the smallest possible steps. The limit of 12 jumps has proven to be an extremely effective countermeasure for several years now, why I would be absolutely against removing it.
Comment
Age group rankings are still possible with my proposed system, as athletes who qualify for the finals can use their final achieved height for their age group rankings. It would also be easier for spectators to follow. Currently, there can be confusion because an athlete might achieve a higher height in qualification rounds (for example, 85 cm) than in the finals (for example, 79 cm). This situation makes it unclear why winning in an age category might require a better performance than winning in the Expert category.
My proposal means that heights in the finals would usually be higher than in qualification rounds, because athletes would only jump as high as needed to qualify and not show their true best performance yet. This makes the finals more exciting for spectators because the highest performances would really become visible only then.
Furthermore, only six or eight athletes reach the finals. Therefore, the qualification height should be set in a way that ensures this number of finalists.
The qualification height will be set individually for each event by the organizers, similar to the system used in athletics, which has already proven successful there.
In Austrian athletics, for example, the rule is that athletes start at the qualification height, but they can agree on a lower starting height if necessary. This approach could also be used by us.
Additionally, I think it is important that athletes are only allowed to jump up to the set qualification height in preliminary rounds to save time.
A clearly defined starting height would also be beneficial. It should be chosen so athletes don't need too many jumps to reach the qualification height. A clear system, similar to athletics, could help here. For example, we could start at 30 cm, reduce increments gradually: every 5 cm up to 45 cm, every 4 cm up to 57 cm, and then every 3 cm up to the qualification height of 66 cm. This would result in ten heights and a maximum of 30 attempts. In practice, however, few athletes would actually attempt all these heights or use all three attempts at each height.
From my personal experience: At Unicon 21, I jumped 140 cm in length. At the French Championships, I started at 120 cm and increased by 5 cm each time. Due to unexpected improvements, I eventually reached 170 cm but had only one attempt left due to the 12-attempt limit, which was ultimately insufficient. Without this limitation, I might have jumped even further.
While this could result in some equal heights in age group rankings, clear tie-break rules, as established in athletics, would solve this issue easily.
Moreover, a system with fixed heights would make the competition clearer and more predictable. Athletes could start at the top of each hour with the entry height, without having to wait for hours for their turn. At the French Championships, for example, I had to wait two hours because many intermediate heights were included, and I couldn't finish my competition due to lack of time.
Comment
> Age group rankings are still possible with my proposed system, as athletes who qualify for the finals can use their final achieved height for their age group rankings.
Yes, of course it would be possible to change the current scoring system, but that would have numerous other effects - including on other disciplines. This would mean that we would no longer have two separate competitions for the jumps, as is currently the case, but just one competition. For reasons of consistency, it would therefore be necessary to consider adapting this for other disciplines as well. In IUF Slalom, for example, the same system is currently used as for the jumps.
> The qualification height will be set individually for each event by the organizers, similar to the system used in athletics, which has already proven successful there.
In unicycling, we have significantly fewer competitions than in athletics and therefore a significantly smaller database to determine qualifying distances/heights. I can therefore promise you that in practice it will not be possible to set the values in such a way that only six or eight make it to the finals (unless they are always set “too high” and then the best six/eight simply qualify - but that would mean we would be back to the current system).
> Additionally, I think it is important that athletes are only allowed to jump up to the set qualification height in preliminary rounds to save time.
But if you really only want to have the best six or eight athletes in the final, then there is practically no time saving in the qualification if these handful of athletes stop at the qualifying distance. In particular, there will be no more time savings if the limit of 12 jumps is to be dropped at the same time. The proposal will therefore lead to anything, but certainly not to a faster competition.
> A clearly defined starting height would also be beneficial.
An entry height/width already exists at many competitions. The rulebook does not prohibit the organizers from setting one for their competition.
> For example, we could start at 30 cm, reduce increments gradually: every 5 cm up to 45 cm, every 4 cm up to 57 cm, and then every 3 cm up to the qualification height of 66 cm.
But this would probably eliminate 60% of the participants from the competition after the first two jumps. In some age groups, it would no longer be possible to have a meaningful ranking. I think the current system is much better, as the athletes can decide for themselves when to take big steps and when to take small steps and thus reach their personal limit.
I think the system you suggested works really well if many athletes compete at a similar level - but that's practically never the case in unicycling, the level here varies enormously and we have to take that into account in the rules. We can't set up rules that are only really practicable for a fraction of the athletes.
> From my personal experience: At Unicon 21, I jumped 140 cm in length. At the French Championships, I started at 120 cm and increased by 5 cm each time. Due to unexpected improvements, I eventually reached 170 cm but had only one attempt left due to the 12-attempt limit, which was ultimately insufficient. Without this limitation, I might have jumped even further.
But it was entirely your decision to go ahead in 5 cm steps. You would have been free to say after the first jump, okay, I'll continue in 10 cm steps for now. I am of the opinion that someone who knows their performance level from training can easily reach their performance limit with 12 jumps.
And my experience from numerous competitions is that the vast majority of athletes are by now able to divide up the 12 jumps so well that they reach their performance limit before they have reached 12 jumps. I would say that limiting the jumps works extremely well.
> Moreover, a system with fixed heights would make the competition clearer and more predictable. Athletes could start at the top of each hour with the entry height, without having to wait for hours for their turn.
I don't want to say that the current system has no problems in terms of scheduling - I think it's already much better than it was when there were unlimited jumps, but there is certainly room for improvement. However, I don't see where switching to a fixed qualification for the final would bring any real advantages here.
Of course, if more than 60% of the current participants are excluded from the competition via entry heights/widths and step size, it will certainly be faster in the end - but in my opinion this is definitely not the way to go. It is already difficult enough to attract young people to the sport at "newcommer level" - if you now radically exclude athletes from competition, this will be completely impossible in the future.
Comment
I won't comment on every point, but I will give my opinion on this.
I mostly agree with Jan on this matter; if there were more riders at the top level with similar distances, and more riders in general, maybe these rules would make more sense. I think the 12 attempt system suits the current landscape of jumps competitions, and riders should definitely know their average capabilities before signing up to a competition. It works well for most people, and it is quite rare that someone uses all attempts.
On the point of selecting riders for the finals, my experience is that even having selected 6 or 8 for the finals in the past Unicons have been overkill and dragged the finals out more than needed, so if efficiency is a concern, I think more time could be saved in the finals than in the prelims by selecting fewer competitors for the finals, and this is currently up to the director. My reasoning for including more than 5 for the finals has been that there has been tie-breakers for 3rd and/or 4th place, which might as well be resolved with finals results, rather than spending time on tie-breakers and finals. There has been such a difference in level between the top 3 riders to the rest that the top three results have come as no surprise anyway.
In addition, the top result is so very dependent on what riders have time in their schedule and enough finances to allow them to go to Unicons and other events. For example someone like Mike Taylor (used to) jump much higher than any competitor at the past Unicons - I haven't seen anyone at the past Unicons even approach the heights he could jump. My point here is that as long as Unicycling is an amateur sport with no other incentive than the individual's passion to train like pros and spend their time and money on going to events, and while I do want to encourage unicycling becoming more mainstream and something other athletes and sport viewers can relate to, I doubt that there will be a more level competition playing field for such a qualification system to make sense.