Varsities 2013: Long Distance - full information

[Maryanne]

[Maryanne]

UPDATE

Long 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.

[Douchier]

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
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).

[kmck]

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.

[Douchier]

I have added a bit that I left out above.