Overall Road Racing (Closed for comments)
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Started
Should we add the Overall Road Racing Champion to the rulebook? This is a category that was used at Unicon 17 and one that has been used for a long time at NAUCC.
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No. Keep it optional. IMHO, having "combined" champions takes away from the value of the separate events. Also it tends to lead people to entering events that would otherwise possibly not be of interest to them. We see this in Track & Field. If hosts wish to add it, let them decide.
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I think we should either list all of the three "overall track racing champion", "overall road racing champion" and "overall muni champion" or leave it completely. I don't see why track racing should have an overall champion and muni and road racing not.
I would take out chapter 2.17 and create an own one (maybe in the general rules) either saying that every host should have it or making it optional as John suggested.
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Sounds good, Mirjam. Also I liked Olaf's suggestion, somewhere else in the committees, of possible pre-set "decathlon"-type events that would always include the same events. Again, keep them optional unless they become really popular.
Then there's the question of coming up with interesting names for them. Since this is Road racing, "Roadathlon" comes to mind. This could be complemented by "Munathlon" and "Trackathlon". I don't know, those sound pretty generic...
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Correction: Olaf was referring (in the MUni Committee) to multiathlons that crossed the various specialties. That, to me, is an even more interesting idea, but could complicate things in terms of scheduling. Those events would have to be scheduled so that the "Uniathlon" riders would be able to be present for all of them.
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To clarify what I meant, I think that the rulebook should have a section that defines how points are distributed for overall events: (8,5,3,2,1). Also, we need keep the definition for track as to what constitutes an overall event? (Yes to IUF Slalom but no to Coasting for example.)
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I Agree with Scott. We can set a method for figuring out points, while not making it a required title.
Slalom yes, as one of the oldest, traditional Track events. I also consider Coasting more of a specialty skill, and not in the Track "universe". On the other hand, if the host is deciding whether or not to do a points event, they could also be the deciders of which events are included in it (or not). One approach would be to do the traditional six events, while another could be to do everything that's a Track event.
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I think if the title is to be given there will need to be a long discussion on scoring.
I don't think the scoring system for Overall Road Racing Champion in the context of NAUCC was appropriate until the scoring for each event was weighted in the overall total. NAUCC typically has had 3 or 4 events to score. Unicon 17 had 2.
If it is an optional title, that would be fine. A suggested scoring guideline would be helpful for an organizer who would opt to award it. As far as where to start, I think NAUCC 2014 had one of the better systems for scoring I've seen so far. Once again though, this is in the context of a 4 event title.
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A big fat no from me.
It happened at Unicon 14 for MUni. There was an overall 'Muni' champion which was combined points from all the different unrelated Muni disciplines.
It was horribly disappointing that XC was not regarded as a category in its own right, and lumped together with DH and 'North Shore' and 'uphill'. I don't think there were medals for XC aside from age group type ones. You could come first in XC or DH and not be considered world champion.
To take the extreme...why not have a unicycle world champion of all disciplines? Combined hockey, basketball, trials, artistic, street, Muni and road racing points?
If unrelated disciplines are used to make a new category- that new category must not rate higher than each of the individual categories. ie, if you have an "overall unicycle champion", the medals must not be bigger/brighter/shinier than the medals for Muni world champion, or Basketball world champions.
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Interesting that you use Unicon 14 as an example for combined Muni champion. Unfortunately, the XC race at Unicon 14 was unworkable. The winners of that race were not necessarily the fastest riders. They were that smaller group of the fastest riders that started in the right locations. Everybody else got stuck in a traffic jam on the double-track, which was at least half of the race distance. There was no opportunity to make up the distance after the trail spread out to allow passing.
The Unicon 14 Muni venue just didn't have a suitable trail for XC. This could happen at future Unicons as well, which is why an arbitrary points system for ranking those events would not be meaningful. And this information probably belongs in that other thread...
It could still apply to Road racing though. While there are lots more roads to choose from for great courses, reality often makes extreme limitations on which ones we are able to use for competitions. So it might apply to Unicon Road races as well.
On the other hand, a straight points system might make sense, based on the idea that the actual courses are never the same, so the overall title is only applicable to that particular championship. Since we can't control Road and Muni courses, maybe that's the simplest way to deal with it.
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Just repeating what I said in the muni discussion about overall champion...I like the idea of having overall road champion but do see the points that some people are making against it. If we do eliminate overall muni champion than in all fairness we should eliminate all overall unicycling champions (track, distance, muni, etc.).
If we added ORC I think you need a minimum of three races and all races should be weighted equally. Why should the marathon or 10k be more important than say the criterium? Also the name should be Combined Road Champion.