Competition Formats
I was at Another World Adventure Centre this weekend to help out with the boarderx competition for their Away Day.
On Saturday we used the old system of three timed runs to qualify the riders into a list of fastest to slowest, and then sort them into races. This system works best with thirty two, or even sixteen riders, going into four man races, but it this case we had fourteen riders doing two man races. With a few tweeks such as not using the folding method to put the best against the worst but instead stacking them so rider 1 competed against rider 8 and rider 7 against rider 14 so the ability gap wasn’t quite so big at the opposite ends, the system worked adequately.
On Sunday, when we were running the whole thing again, I decided to experiment with a different system. It was based on the ‘Challenge Threes’ system I developed years ago for fun comps that don’t really want to use knockouts to find a winner. With a few adaptations for such small numbers we ended up with this:
Split the riders into two equal groups, the best in group one and the worst in group two. For the first race, the riders compete against riders in the same group, but the riders who come first in their race go into group one and those who come second go into group two. This happens for each race meaning half the riders from each group change groups each time so there is variety in who races who. Riders who win in group one get four points, second gets three points, first in group two gets two points and last gets one point. Then, once the riders have had enough races we add up all the points they’ve earned and announce the winner.
Its a really simple system that can be run on a couple of sheets of paper and gives the riders as many races as they want. It also made me think that the ATBA-UK should publish the different competition systems it uses to make it easier for centres to run competitions more easily.