"Simpson, Bob" wrote:
> Well, Celia, you're opening a can of worms here and the power to determine
> winners will lie in the hands of the handicap determiner. But then that's
> always been the case.
Of course - and this is why handicap events are generally meant to be "fun" events
done for honour and enthusiastic competition rather than for riches! :-)
> Some might argue that the time given for each year of
> age is too generous.
I'd really like to know where those tables came from.
> I can see the gears of a mathematician turning in your
> head and I think that what you propose will be very difficult, but not
> impossible, to implement.
>
> You can make the handicaps any form that you like of course, but whether it
> will be fair is up to debate.
Of course - Handicap events should be fun competitive events and fairness or at
least reasonableness is what makes them fun and competitive.
> In the example you gave of the local Pro
> female and the local top man, a baseline can be determined perhaps by
> subtracting a percentage of the women's times, not subtracting the raw
> number. That would be 112.5% or if you take the world record for the hour,
> the woman comes in at 117.1% of the man.
IF doing INDIVIDUAL handicapping in which gender was one of the factors used in the
handicap, then yes, one would probably want to reduce the women's times by 12.5%
(here) rather than by a constant 143 seconds for the gender handicapping component.
I didn't do this since it could, even though it shouldn't, be viewed as applying a
performance-based handicap (ie., slower women would get more of a handicap than
faster women). So I applied the same (smaller) 143 second handicap to all women.
Life is a compromise...
> But if we take it to a ridiculous
> extreme, what if we tried to adjust for all factors. If I show up with a
> sore toe that day, should I be given a further 2 second bonus or what if the
> TT is in the morning when I personally don't ride my best. Give me another
> 20 seconds there, perhaps. What about factoring in how many hours I have to
> work per week and how physically demanding that work is? An unfortunate
> result of this is that when a rider wins in the corrected results, there
> might be some consternation that the handicapper gave them too much of an
> edge.
My feeling is that anyone who shows up at a handicap event wanting these kinds of
benefits is taking the event a little too seriously and perhaps ought to just stay
at work!
> Handicaps are rarely won by the fastest rider, if they're set up properly,
> and that is probably the reason for this kind of event - an attempt to
> reward the effort rather than the talent or natural ability.
And yet the point is that such an event can actually motivate PB performances from
any of the participants. In my opinion, that's the real beauty of handicap events.
By giving all participants a fair chance for top spot, many will pull more out of
their bodies to try to win. In a non-handicap event, the stronger riders don't have
as much competition for the top spot, and the weaker riders have no chance of
attaining it. In a (fair) handicap event, every participant is everyone else's
competition for the top spot.
> I would support a more comprehensive handicap, but the complications of making
> it
> perfectly fair is what keeps it from happening, I think.
We have lots of imaginative, intelligent, lively, competitive, reasonable people in
the OBC. That's all we should need... We've already seen some good ideas.
Celia
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