All the information from the Captain's pack
Long Distance
Location: Boathouse, University of Limerick
Date: Saturday 9th Feb
Time: 11am Registration. Start: 12:30 pm
The long distance race is the total participation event of the Intervarsities competition. There are no limits to the number of entries from each college. Distance will be 6km for all competitors.
Format
The race will be held in a marathon style format broken up into several classes with a mass start for each class:
• Men's High Performance
• Women's High Performance
• Men's General Purpose Plastic
• Women's General Purpose Plastic
• K1 Men
• K1 Women
• K2
• C2
• Touring Doubles
• GP Doubles
• Men's Wave Hopper
• Women's Wave Hopper
• HPM
• HPW
• GPM
• GPW
• K1M
• K1W
• K2
• C2
• T2
• GP2
• WHM
• WHW
Classes must contain a minimum of 5 universities to qualify for university points.
Note:
Touring Doubles1
- Includes all tandem kayaks other than K2 racing kayaks and general plastic river running/ creeking tandem kayaks. - e.g. tandem sea kayaks, tandem sit-on-top kayaks etc.
GP Doubles2
- Includes general plastic tandem river running/ creeking kayaks only.
- Excludes tandem sea kayaks etc.
- The race organiser holds the right to decide which category a boat falls under on the day.
Registration
- Registration for all competitors is to be filled out on the entry form (see form below) prior to the event and emailed to the varsities organisation committee.
- Registration on the day will take place at the University of Limerick Boat House and begin at 11.00am (time depending on timing strictness at whitewater race).
- Colleges will be provided with ample time to transfer between events as to ensure no competitors get left out.
- There will be no entries registered prior to a half hour before the first race.
- Numbered Bibs will be handed out at registration and are to be visible by competitors at all time during the race.
- The numbered bibs are to be handed back immediately after the competitors race to race officials.
- We will be keeping a record of who was allocated each bib and if bibs are not returned or damaged the cost will be taken out of your college club's deposit.
Race Operation
- Course will be marked out by buoys.
- Competitors follow the marked circuit in the fastest time possible.
- Competitors who short circuit the course will be disqualified regardless of experience.
- Competitors must ensure that their race number is clearly visible at all times.
- The Course finishing line will be clearly defined and clear of any lapping system so as not to confuse competitors completing laps with those finishing the race.
Results
- Bib numbers and associated times will be transcribed from the hard copy to a digital format by the Finishing Judge Scribe.
- The race numbers will be allocated to their respective names so that they can be broken down into associated classes.
- This allows individual results for each class to be processed.
- Each name must also be associated to its respective university so that college team positions can be allocated.
- The college positions are determined by the sum of the fastest time in each class with representatives from more than 5 colleges.
Scoring
Colleges will receive 1 point for each paddler they have on the water, however this will be limited to 10 points per college.
The below table is the ranking list for the cumulative scoring of each competitor per college.
Place Points
1st 45
2nd 42
3rd 39
4th 36
5th 33
6th 30
7th 27
8th 24
9th 21
10th 18
11th 15
12th 12
13th 9
14th 6
15th 3
The individual scoring per class is shown in the table below. All of the college's individual scores will then be added together to give the cumulative score and ranking.
Place Points
1st place 20 points
2nd place 15 points
3rd place 10 points
4th place 5 points
UPDATE
QuoteLong distance:
In previous years long distance has had an enormous weighting i.e. weighing double what the other events have weighed. This year we have decided to give it a weighting of 1.5.
We will record the finishing position of the top 4 competitors per class. These 4 competitors will receive points. This is known as the individual scoring. Individual scores will then be added together to give the cumulative score and ranking of a particular college. To help us with this and eliminate any controversy we will have a race line finishing camera in place.
Thoughts on this please, it's up for review at a captains' meeting at 18:00 on Friday.
With this system a college where one person finishes in 4th place will beat a college where everyone finishes in 5th place, so it doesn't seem fair. Also a college where nobody comes higher than 5th will get no points at all.
What about this:
- each competitor gets points for finishing the race (eg 1st=30, 2nd=28...15th=1, 14th=1...last=1)
-> adding all competitor points to calculate the college's points would mean that large colleges would have a huge advantage, so that doesn't seem fair
- add each college's 10 best individual scores to calculate their college score
- award 1 point per additional competitor up to 10 people (this is the currently proposed participation bonus)
I think that seems fairer, or at least that it would reflect the performances more accurately.
It means that only 20 people can win points, so a big club won't have any advantage passed 20 people.
It'll depend how small the small colleges are I guess, the top 10 could be reduced to top 6 or something.
The weighting seems fine to me, but if anyone sees other angles on this speak up.
I don't think it's fair either.
It's also simply not what they said it was going to be at C&S. On the weekend, first they said that it was going to be "exactly the same as last year", and from then it changed.
To be honest, I suspect that there isn't anyone there who's too into marathon, that they looked at previous years systems and kind of took them up wrong.
There are a lot of colleges that are only going to score participation points.
Out of hundreds of competitors, there's only going to be about 30 people who get any meaningful points.
http://varsities.nuigkc.com/wordpress/uploads//2010-long-distance-results-varsities.xlsx (http://varsities.nuigkc.com/wordpress/uploads//2010-long-distance-results-varsities.xlsx)
There's a results page for a previous year that worked well, but I part of it I have reservations about.
( Colleges were scored for their top six placings, plus up to ten participation points. Placing points were only awarded to the top ten finishers 100 going down to 55. point were added up and a long distance winner etc. was found. each event was carried equal weight)
What I think it should be:
1. College awarded long-distance points for top six placings.
2. College awarded one long-distance point each for up to ten participants (other than those awarded participation points)
3. All results are awarded long-distance placing points. 1st gets 100, 2nd gets 95 etc. until you get down to five, at which point everyone gets 5 placing points.
4. Long-distance points are added up and rankings in long-distance are based on this. I think that a system where the colleges top 6(more, perhaps even up to ten could work) placings are added together instead of all of them. This is in the interest of awarding strong performances in all colleges but not allowing weight of numbers in larger colleges to dominate the scoring.
5. Another idea that I favour would be to have HP, wavehoppper, k2 and k1 categories weighted higher than the others. This is to reflect the large effort that goes into developing the skill to be able to compete in these categories. It also provides incentives for colleges to train in these disciplines and thus encourages the development.
6. Colleges are awarded varsity points ( I think that UL call them "University points" in the booklet) based on rankings which are then added to points for other events.
7. I think that Long-Distance should carry double weight ( ie. if 50 varsity points are awarded for coming first in freestyle, then it would be 100 for coming first in Long-distance etc.) ( UL have 1 : 1.5 weighting, which I think is ok but I reckon that 1:2 is more reflective of the variety of disciplines in long-distance and that the whole college is competing).
I don't agree with only counting the top 4, many colleges will struggle to get any points from such an arrangement. Top six positions for the each college, the college with most points wins. Don't think it should weighted any differently from any other competition.
I've no problem with removing participation points as this only benefits clubs with more than 10 members
This will involve a lot more work on the organisers to record all results not just the top 4 in each category so I can see where it's coming from.
I have added a bit that I left out above.