[Guest]

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

 

Dragon Boat Canada


IDBF


Canoe Kayak Canada

169 Guests, 0 Users

[Dr. Evil]

The above posts point out the major flaw with using times exclusively to determine advancements.  Conditions change from race to race and with a favorable tail-wind the fastest time for the whole weekend wasn't the overall winner of Kelowna.  It was Sun-Rype. 

Placements are always the first thing a race official uses to determine advancements.  Two 1sts = 20 points, a 1st & 2nd = 17 points, 1st & 3rd = 15 points.  Two 2nds = 14.

Point System
1st Place – 10 points, 2nd Place – 7 points, 3rd Place – 5 points, 4th Place – 3 points, 5th Place – 1 point.
In the event that two or more teams finish the qualifying heats with the same number of points, the total cumulative race times of the tying teams will determine the placement of the teams.

Why this format works so well
• Times from previous races are not used for advancement, so water condition, current, weather and lane
assignment are irrelevant. (Except in the case of a tie)

The big caveat with the points system is that in order for it to work well, the initial seeding of the teams in the preliminary heats needs to be fairly accurate. Unfortunately, there is a degree of subjectivity to it. Looking at the seeding of the first races on Saturday, IMO, I thot there were some heats that were weaker than others. Under the points system, a weaker team may advance to a higher semi heat than anticipated and vice versa, stronger teams facing each other earlier than anticipated, may end up in a weaker division.

Judging from some of the comments from some of the posters and looking at where teams placed when the dust settled, I can see where some teams might make a case that poor seeding may have hurt them.

[coach]

I'm not on Sudden Impact so hopefully I'm unbiased, but I could just plain be wrong.

What happened IMO is that in the first race they had the questionable boat and were beat by RGL United by a boat length. I'm not taking anything away from RGL because they are for sure strong and fast and that would have been a good race had it been in equal boats.

The 2nd place team (Sudden Impact) then raced in a heat against a first place finisher from a different heat, being FODB in this case. Sudden Impact finished 2nd again.

Based on points they would have been out of Platinum for sure in either case, but because of the slow differential time in the first heat they ended up in Jade. Fast teams with two 2nds would probably end up in Diamond which would have been better. Bummer.

Again, this is just my opinion.

[Rossifumi]

It sounds like everything worked out in the end:

A team won both heats on Saturday, they got Platinum.
Another team had 1st & 2nd on Saturday, they got Diamond.

Looking over the numbers, spots available etc, I don't think it's unreasonable to see a team placing 2nd and 2nd to place in Jade. 

As for Sudden's 1st race, it was a tough one b/c RGL is on the pace. 

To put some perspective on this, Kelowna is the 2nd biggest BC racing event.  I think it speaks to the depth of competition (which I frankly thought was awesome) that you have these tough races in your 'seeding' races, and should be welcomed.
(I sincerely hope there is no expectaction of easy wins on Saturdays)

My teams had to race against fast teams like Sudden Impact and Extreme Currents in our 'seeding' races (with the slimey boats btw).  Absolutely no complaints here.  Personally b/c I always welcome a tough race, and the opportunity to 'knock out' tough teams, that's racing!

[@1 with the blade]

Conditions change from race to race and with a favorable tail-wind the fastest time for the whole weekend wasn't the overall winner of Kelowna.  It was Sun-Rype. 

Don't mean to burst a bubble but Sun-Rype was the "fastest boat in the Okanagan" as in; an Okanagan team boat. The fasted time of the whole weekend was Pac Reach with a 2:08 and change. I think that was in a non-scummy boat heat on Saturday, and yes they did end up as the overall winners. That fastest boat thing had a lot of us confused in the beer garden but I don't think we were processing as fast at that time.

Talking about making sense out of the Saturday seadings there didn't seem to be much reason to it. From my rudimentary calculations of top 10 teams where each had 1st place fiinishs on Saturday it then seemed (from the race notes on each downloaded race grid) that it was now a case of overall times.

If this is the case how did the Red Devils with an overall time of 4:42... on Saturday get ranked 1st place over 2nd place ranked team Pac Reach with an overall time of 4:28. The only team that ended up with an overall time less than the 4:30 range from the first day and even they didn't get top ranking. Maybe they got some of that mysterious added time calculations.

You have to wonder if that team didn't get ranked top with their numbers how many others were so messed up

[ConfusedAsian]

Conditions change from race to race and with a favorable tail-wind the fastest time for the whole weekend wasn't the overall winner of Kelowna.  It was Sun-Rype. 

Don't mean to burst a bubble but Sun-Rype was the "fastest boat in the Okanagan" as in; an Okanagan team boat. The fasted time of the whole weekend was Pac Reach with a 2:08 and change. I think that was in a non-scummy boat heat on Saturday, and yes they did end up as the overall winners. That fastest boat thing had a lot of us confused in the beer garden but I don't think we were processing as fast at that time.

Talking about making sense out of the Saturday seadings there didn't seem to be much reason to it. From my rudimentary calculations of top 10 teams where each had 1st place fiinishs on Saturday it then seemed (from the race notes on each downloaded race grid) that it was now a case of overall times.

If this is the case how did the Red Devils with an overall time of 4:42... on Saturday get ranked 1st place over 2nd place ranked team Pac Reach with an overall time of 4:28. The only team that ended up with an overall time less than the 4:30 range from the first day and even they didn't get top ranking. Maybe they got some of that mysterious added time calculations.

You have to wonder if that team didn't get ranked top with their numbers how many others were so messed up

I don't think they take the time of the race by itself, but take the average difference from first and last or something like that to rank the teams after point. so if red devil has slow boats in it's heat that might be a reason why they are rank higher

[@1 with the blade]

Gottcha... not really, but it makes better sense than what I interpreted from the grid instructions. Maybe this ranking "system" could be better explained in the race rules and such teams can get from their site.

Guess we should put this in the suggestion box. Thanks for the post Confused! and add me to the list of confused

[tiger]

Maybe they got some of that mysterious added time calculations.

You have to wonder if that team didn't get ranked top with their numbers how many others were so messed up

I think you are still messed up.  I think someone already stated that time was never added to a team's time.  I would suspect that the Red Devils were in the slower boats on Saturday and Pac Reach wasn't.

[@1 with the blade]

Guess I should have put the  after the comment about mysterious added time as it was a joke, sorry for messing up.

If I look over the handy-dandy race grid from the weekend and read my chicken scratch correctly, both Red Devils and Pac Reach each had a race in both the slower boats (even races) and the faster boats (odd number races). Actually as they both won their first races they raced in exactly the same boats (lane 4, M Channel) in their second races. Yes Pac Reach did get the faster time in the clean boats. Their first race was a more normal 2:20 in the slower boats as opposed to Red Devils first race in the slow boats at 2:25. Both dropped time in the second (faster boat) race but Pac Reach reduced 12 seconds vs. Red Devil dropping only 8ish.

If it was some obscure averaged time in each heat type deal then maybe yes, they got a better ranking. It seems odd to get a better ranking due to other boats in the heats being slower or faster overall for an average. Guess if anyone knows the real story behind the rankings it would end a lot of confusion, guessing and discussion here if they had just posted it for everyone to understand in the first place rather than suggest added times and other such ideas.

Regardless Pac Reach kicked my teams' butt and this weekend, everyone else's. Didn't look they just walked away with it without a challenge, as some suggested; they still had to fight for it. Thought Cruise Control Reunited would have given them a bit more of a fight in the final as they did in the semi. We'll see where we all stand come next season!

[seaboy]

In some ways this method of ranking seems counterintuitive and it doesn't work in every case obviously. But I think it is probably the most fair. I am not sure of the exact formula but if you average the speeds and then calculate how much above the average PR and the Red Devils were, RD comes out on top. Even with a trimmed mean it's closer but RDs still comes out on top. It looks like PR just drew faster boats in there heats. This type of ranking helps to eliminate changes in weather or water conditions and even allows comparisons between heats in different types of boats (e.g. Alcan Gemini/6-16). I think its best to only compare absolute times when they are in the same race.

The race organizers do an amazing job, and what they are trying to do is rank teams that haven't actually raced against each other and of course there is no perfect system for that.

In this case it just meant PR got placed in a different lane, of course it would suck if your team got bumped down a division because of it.

[Monk]

Variable race conditions (inclusive of seeding and boat selection) are part of the sport. Coping with it is part of the sport too. Get over it.

'Sometimes you're the dog, and sometimes you're the hydrant'.