[Meta] Scalable Competitions: From Newcomer to Unicon

Comments about this discussion:

Started 05 Apr 08:49

My dear friends,

I'm happy to present my design that helps people start at their first ever competition and qualify up until Unicon to compete for world title. I'm thinking about this since Unicon in Montreal, I'll comprehend 11 years of thinking for you.

This is lenghty, to explain how things look when everything is connected (hence the name meta). The idea is to have this as connecting piece and keep discussing topics in their individually.

## Goal

What I want to achieve with my design:

Welcome people to the sport, their first competition wo/ overwhelming them
Qualification path for athletes from within their countries up to Unicon
Give countries a way to design such a qualification path
Predictable and deterministic competition schedule for athletes to write training plans for
Competitors to sign up for "Individual Freestyle" but not "Individual Freestyle Age Group/Expert" respectively

Short, but ambitious.

## Given

Things I learned when interviewing people or doing research:

Each discipline we have is unique, looking for a standard that matches them all is going to become a failure
Instead look for "something" they can use to express discipline needs, which in turn unites them
IUF itself already classifies events as Recognized, Endorsed and Sanctioned
IUF Event Classification
Competition rules can work for Unicon and Newcomers, but Qualification rules can not work for Unicon and Newcomers

## Solution Design

Let me explain the "something" that is missing. We miss defined terms/vocabulary that help us to express these. I am introducing/defining the following: classes, groups and season. Later I'll give examples how to use them.

That will allow us to go from groups at newcomer level up to classes for unicon.

### Classes

Classes reward championship title, eg. World Champion, Youth World Champion or German Champion.

There are three classes:

Junior/Kids (< 15)
Youth (15 - 18)
Adults (18+)

IUF Endorsed (national, continental, international) events have to crown winners in each classes they offer. Based on that, these classes must remain rigid and fixed.

That is based on two factors:

How other sports structure their championship schedule. Gymnastics holds youth events and adult events at the same time in the same place, but they are publicly recognized as two. Biathlon has the world championships and the junior world championships. You'll find similar terms in other sports.
Equality factors for fair competitions, mainly biological factors.
- Age 15: Hormones change due to puberty giving athletes a power boost.
- Age 18: Prepare people for age 21/22 as this is when bodies have their zenith in what they are biologically/physically capable of. Second reason is most societies consider people as adults and grant them more rights of what they can do that alters their behavior (eg. going to a club at age 18 "all-night-long" is soo much visible in freestylers)

Discussion: Groups Discussion

### Groups

Groups serve two purposes:

Organize the event schedule (start groups)
Optionally reward winners within a group (not a championship title though)

Groups by that are more flexible in comparison to classes, which is the idea of that design to adjust them to a given situation.

! **Groups can only defined within Classes** !

A) Using them as Start Groups:

Primary start group:

Based on age: Age groups as we know them
Based on skill: Beginner/Advanced/Expert as used in Muni

Secondary start group:

Based on heat/wave: As in Track and Field
Based on round: tournament mode in Flatland or X-Style

B) Using them as Winning Groups:

Based on age: Age groups as we know them

Wild Usage Examples:

In Muni you may start in advance, but win in your age group
They might not be needed at all. Flatland competitions run fine by only using classes (technically you can say, this is one start group)
In Freestyle there can be multiple start groups for a class at Unicon. Each group consists of 5 competitors and there is a break to give next wave of starters time to acclimate themselves on the floor (order of sequence is based on drawing) (the idea is taken from figure skating)

Discussion: Expert classes and Age Groups

### Seasons

Athletes are assigned to classes/groups based on their age _at the event_ (iirc this is first day of the event, I couldn't find the reference). While this is good for that one particular event, we now have more events for one discipline in a country, eg. racing season or freestyle qualifications in Germany. Similar affected would be "cups", formerly taste-of-mud or if they were racing cup in Germany, that would reward the most consistent athlete over the year at the end. Other sports give visibility to these athletes in form of a yellow jersey (tour de france, biathlon world cup).

While there is already a competition season, it is not respected rule-wise and comes with plenty disadvantages for people having birthday on- or off-season.

Huge impact on their competition requirements: changing wheel size in track and field (20" to 24") or routine length changes (3min to 4min), etc.
Unfair training planning and competition preparation for those having
Unfair competitions due to extra challenging situation mentioned before

It's biased and favors athletes based on their birthday (a random fact), leading to unfair conditions to some. We have the obligation to provide a fair conditions to everybody in the best of our ability. We can address this with allowing seasons.

Here is what makes a season:

A season has a defined start and end date and can be no longer than a year
Each season defines the events that form the series (see below)
A season has a due date that assigns the athlete to an age group throughout the season (see below)
Athletes can enter multiple series that happen at the same time (track and field, freestyle and muni)

We can see two different types of seasons/series:

Qualification: You compete your way up to Unicon, state -> regional -> national -> international
Cup: You have competitions over the year, each counts on its own. There may be a season winner.

That helps to identify a due date:

In a qualification series: the highest competitions is the due date
In a cup, If there is a highest competition (national, international): then use this one
In a cup, if there is no highest competition (taste of mud): organizers must pick a good due date here (?)

Most people or organizations won't be affected by this as it requires a critical mass of athletes managed with seasons. Germany is affected already, Japan itself could make use of that (but they organize things on their own).

## Applying the Design

We must put the design above into practice. That is putting this into rules. Important is to understand, that this goes from generic to special, where special can overwrite generic. Also Unicon/Country rules must be allowed to adopt the rules to their situation without violating them.

The rulebook already works that way with "Part 1: General Rules and Definitions" that can be overridden by disciplines.

### Disciplines

Each discipline in the rulebook has "Event Organizer Rules" which contain "Age Groups". They are point of discussion for each discipline to define their tailored groups (eg muni's groups are based on skill).

Regardless there should be a general rule as a fallback, when nothing special for that discipline is defined.

Discussion: Groups Discussion

### Unicon

At the moment the IUF rules tightly couple them to Unicon, which was feasible 20 years ago, but no longer is (we are lucky to have more people do unicycling). It is time to extract Unicon Rules into its own document. (I would propose this in general - but that committee hasn't started as of me writing this, it is long overdue).

In a nutshell this would use the vocabulary above to define the (available) classes (per discipline) - it's the only IUF sanctioned event and the highest competition, this is the focus.
Along with the necessary qualification required to start (ie. countries should nominate their best riders based on an IUF endorsed event).

There will be it's own thread on this with more details.

### Countries

There are specifics that apply to each country on how to arrange competitions that fits their demographics and even geographics. Countries that are in need to run a qualification series, can define their seasons and how the transition from using groups in lower tier competitions and go to higher tier competitions with classes as an IUF endorsed even that acts as qualifier to Unicon.

Example for Freestyle:

1. State level: Competitors win in age groups, best in a class/age group advance
2. Regional level (Recognized): Competitors win in age groups, best in a class advance
3. National level (Endorsed): Competitors compete and win in classes, best advance/are nominated for Unicon

Each level defines how much competitors are allowed from the lower tiers to control the amount of athletes per events (there are limits).

As an IUF Endorsed event, "deviations should be documented and submitted to the IUF prior to the event." (see: IUF classified events)

### Newcomer Events

We had one such couple of weeks ago in Germany for Freestyle and riders hitting their first competitions. There was an age group 9.5 - yes, half a year. That was ideal to distribute competitors evenly. It wasn't part of the qualification series, and was free to set these. With the proposed changes here, this is still possible, showcasing the flexibility of this design and closing the loop that this design scales from newcomer competitions to Unicon.

## Summary

These little additions and definitions allow us to design a competition landscape in favor of riders. It highlights the importance of competitions, makes qualification clear to riders and allows them for predictable training preparations.

---

phew, that was a lot (10 years in summary). If you are still reading, you made it - hooray.

How to think through this at best:

This design is more about giving pieces that can be connected together, is everything possible?
Please check if you can model your situation?
Try model for yourself - where does it no longer work?

I expect a lot of questions, feel free :)

Thank you,

gossi

Comment 06 Apr 15:31

This would solve a lot of problems we have here in Germany

Comment 06 Apr 19:55

Gossi, I like a lot of this framework but I am a little confused about it in application. I feel like there are some separate issues here that might need to be separate discussions.

I really like the Classes that you propose. I think it offers opportunities for riders at all levels while still acknowledging that Junior riders should not be treated as elites.

I think that the idea of Seasons really makes sense as well in terms of qualifications.

I think that you have had lots of time to think this through and have it understood in your brain but even as a native English speaker I'm having a hard time following. I really do think that putting it into separate discussion topics could help.