mvm said...

Personally I feel it would be great to have six discards for the year for each rider and only count the best six months to make it a more level playing field for everyone in the world. If you look at our evaluated ranking it's mostly Dutch riders at the top and it takes the concept away from the international spirit of our site. Discards are common in windsurfing and sailing anyhow, so why not use them to make it easier for interested people to enter the competition.

Think Martins idea is excellent,
"Discard Months" would work!

Herbylyn said...

Well I've plowed thru this thread twice and I think the suggestion with the most merit is from Decrepit.
Simply put it retains all the good things the GTC has built up and just adds one more
category. It would do the most to level the playing field.
Happy New Year to All

I agree with Herby and Decrep and Roo, add an award category to encourage responsible participation in locations where 12 months sailing is impossible or downright life threatening!

Hi MVM,

We're both on the same page

There's no problem in putting up ideas to make the site appeal to a wider audience, if you haven't already guessed, we're really keen to make the site grow. I think that having some fast international riders in the challenge will really spice things up, as it stands it's possible that us Aussies are getting a bit complacent because we're always at the pointy end of the tables...

Discards are a definite possibility for the international cup, if this encourages more participation then I'm all for it.

We had discussed discards before, it was decided that for the Australian comp that discards would mean that people would just not sail through winter, so it discouraged the crazy antics of putting up a tiny sail in those heavy winter storms... but it seems that you guys have even wilder conditions than we get.

So the options for the international cup are:
1) No discards (which brings it into line with the Aussie competition, it might not work for the heavy winter conditions you get)
2) A number of discards, say... um... 4? 6?
3) One month only, so the ranking is based on each team's best month.

What does everyone think?

Think I'm coming in favour of 6 discards. Effectively my idea of 1 month is 11 discards. On reflection this is a bit "thin". 6 months has more depth and is probably more meaningful.


As a matter of interest, if we judged the International cup this way this year, this is what it would look like.

SA SS 8 9 10 16 17 22 = 82
SRM 9 15 16 17 18 20 = 95
PitCrew 9 11 15 24 25 38 = 122

As far as I can make out anyway.

I think the discard system has alot of merit for the annual cup.

Nebs,
As for the Australian arm of the challenge, I don't believe teams would on purpose miss sailing certain months because of a discard system, but rather miss sailing due to a month without wind (well maybe in the warmer climes). And as such, the discard system does offer a more level playing field for teams where year round wind is not normal to their geographical region. I don't think it disadvantages teams that sail in a region of consistent year round wind either - they just get more opportunities to improve their year's standing.

On that note I reckon 3 to 4 discards could be seen as an equitable proposition. Whatever the decision, the GPSTC is a fabulous competition to be part of and kudos to you guys in making it such a great event. 2010 is looking bigger than Ben Hur - Keep up the excellent work.

Like I said in my earlier post "As most places have 4-6 good months of wind why not count your best six monthly results for the Inter Cup and give the teams a reason to participate."

One added question, will it be ok to post using the KA72 Speed reader for results? Not everyone up here has the software to calculate their results whereas KA72 makes it pretty much idiot proof.

hardie said...

sailquik said...

Great discussion about how to make the International comp better! I think the 4-6 discards concept seems like it could work in the northern hemisphere where it can get dangerously cold for a few month of the year (not to mention a shortage of liquefied water!)
For the Aussie comp, it may help to even out the competition a bit if we consider the idea of ONE discard (pretty much everywhere in OZ has a really disastrous no-wind month sometime through the year) but I worry that more than that is somewhat self defeating of one of the main aims of the TC which is to get people motivated to get out on the water more often and sometimes in conditions where they may not be otherwise as motivated. EG: For many years I have pretty much laid off sailing between June and September (brrrr!) but this year I was motivated by the old team spirit to get a better wet suit and get out there. Since I had a few team mates to sail with it turned out to be very enjoyable indeed. I think that is one of the big benefits of the GPS-TC. Lets not loose that.

Yes I think 1 month discard for Oz might just make it fairer!!

As long as I get to pick the discards for each team[}:)]

Roo said...

One added question, will it be ok to post using the KA72 Speed reader for results? Not everyone up here has the software to calculate their results whereas KA72 makes it pretty much idiot proof.

Roo,
I understand Nebs approved the KA72 site for the GPSTC some time ago. I use both realspeed and KA72 (and yes KA72 makes it idoti, idoit, idiot proof )

As an aside, I've wondered whether each team uploads their best two sailor's sessions for each category per month on the KA72 website. That way there can be no manipulation of data and everyone is assured of it being a level "sailing strip".

Sorry about going off the handle about discards and handicaps. I had the wrong end of the stick. Discards sound fine and is fair for everyone. I'm just worried we will have too many rules that make it too complicated and less fun.

As mentioned many times most of us did not enter the challenge to win prizes or enough money to retire on. If someone cheats with the numbers then they are cheating themselves first and foremost. They cheat their teammates secondly and then the wider GTC community.

As we currently run an honour system and from accounts seems to work reasonably well, then hopefully we keep it going. If someone won a cup based on dodgy numbers then what do they achieve? Winning a $20 or so trophy coz thats all its worth to them. However winning the cup based on true performances is worth more than cup's weight in gold. If the winner is found out to have cheated then their infamy would stain them for years.

Maybe use a system like GPSS they want everyone to use the auto upload .........NOT YET

Except that realspeed carn,t do it so you have to do your self and sending files to KA72 is fine if they,re small but some of mine are a bit large and have to be split to be emailed. Plus some of us like checking the tracks and making sure that they,re clean and we can marvel at "how good was that run" with a nice cuppa at Daffys ......We need some wind

Bring on next year with its new challenges and see if someone can stop the SRM

icesurf said...

Mobydisc said...

If the winner is found out to have cheated then their infamy would stain them for years.

Under Arm bowling rings a bell.

That wasn't cheating.

kato said...

... sending files to KA72 is fine if they,re small but some of mine are a bit large and have to be split to be emailed. Plus some of us like checking the tracks and making sure that they,re clean and we can marvel at "how good was that run" with a nice cuppa at Daffys ......We need some wind

Just as an aside, the KA72 site has an upload limit of 4MB on a single file. If anyone wants that upped, I'm happy to adjust it. However, only 1 in 400 files I receive is even bigger than 1MB at present.

One of the points of the site is that it makes all uploaded files available to be downloaded, inspected, and manually recalculated in other software. All uploaded files are available for download to anonymous users for two weeks after uploading.

My point in doing this was that there is no good reason to have an automated system that is not subject to auditing and manual correction.

At the moment, if someone posts an unusual result at GPSTC, you have to request a copy of the file to check it out, unless it was posted at ka72.com.

Dylan

Might have to bump that upload limit to about 6MB

While it's a little chilly at the mo in Euro/USA land this year let us not forget Martin's done 50kn in winter and the Kirby boys have some 47s. One of the advantages of counting the whole year is it evens out things. If it was based on the best 6 months the Pit crew would clean up locally.
2 drops would be OK. Best 10 months count. that is a good balance , best 10 out of 12.

Nebs,

I think that is spot on. 1 discard for local (Aus) and 4 for international (or 2010)

Run the international for 2010 with 4 discards and then evaluate what would happen if there had been 6 discards.

I see a few others have commented that only 1 local discard does not overly affect the outcomes - to me this seems to validate the premise of allowing a discard.

- J