Overall Muni Champion (Closed for comments)

Comments about this discussion:

Started 21 Nov 02:32

Should we add the Overall Mountain Unicycling 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.

Comment 21 Nov 23:27

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.

Comment 22 Nov 10:24

I think a lot about it the last weeks and John is right in his opinion. Those days riders specialize themself more and more as it is needed to stay competitive. A lot of Downhill riders hate uphill riding and also they are not a big fan of X/C :) So I think a official IUF tiltle is not a good idea while I like those "King of the Hill Trophys" I see att some Muni events. Those was sponsored by a private / commercial sponsor and a defined committee decide after all competitions who get the price. This price was also not fixed on competition results, it was based on the all over behaviour and the results. So to help an injured rider instead of winning a race can bring more points here then the first place (to give an example). To have an official Over all Muni World Champion is not a good Idea from my opinion.

I would much more like to deete all classical all over champions (so also races) and create a decathlon or sevenathlon ... instead of it which would provide room for riders that are interested in multiple disciplines but have to stop some to stay competitive in others. A nice mixed multiathlon can end in a very attractive discipline and show then who is the all over champion.

Comment 12 Dec 04:10

I agree with Olaf. Having a "muni decathlon" as a separate category is a good idea. But Awarding points to just an all around rider may take away from the event. Or people might simply not care.

Comment 12 Dec 04:19

I'm also with Olaf. I think Muni disciplines are to different to have an Over all World Champion.

Having some kind of decathlon sounds very interesting!

Comment 12 Dec 04:56

it also provides an intensive to train multiple disciplines

Comment 12 Dec 05:29

I like the idea to award Overall Muni Champion, and it should be in the Rulebook. It might be optional for Unicon organizers.

My opinion to John's Foss words:

1 - "having "combined" champions takes away from the value of the separate events." - if any, only in small extent.

2 - ..."it tends to lead people to entering events that would otherwise possibly not be of interest to them" - not really, If we make only award to the best one instead of showing classification af all participants it will not bother riders from the shadow of elite. Also, practice shows that top riders from one muni discipline do well in others.

It is "Mulitathlon" (Olaf's suggestion) which eventaully will lead to above, and in my opinion it's not a good idea.

The rules for awarding should be clear. For example average of the places from all Muni disciplines, and mandatory participation in all Muni disciplines. (or weighted average giving higher weights for more popular disciplines like DH and XC)

But there is one problem! how to classify riders who compete in different categories, i.e. standard and unlimited at the same discipline?

Comment 12 Dec 06:04

For me the Overall Muni Champion (and same for Overall Race Champion) and to make kind of a "Multiathlon" are very different things. Overall Race Champion exist since a long time and Overall Muni Champion was invented by some hosts much later. From my experience over the last years more and more riders see a need to specialise themself to one Discipline to be there in the top level. several years ago you find a lot of good riders doing a mountain of disciplines while a national or Unicon and they often was in the Top 10 in many of them. Actually this is nearly not possible anymore because more and more riders focus on just one discipline which provide us better and better results also. To make competing in all Muni discipline for example mandatory is even more worth from my opinion as it would force riders to do what they dont like / dont want.

Multi Athlon is different, it combines a well collected set of disciplines where usually the person who do it is not perfect in even one of this disciplines but he is able to do all of them on a good level (some very good, some less). In normal athletics you find only a very very view people that do Multi Athlons and also a single discipline because they train for the Multiathlon as they like the challange to do the full spectrum of those disciplines instead of focusing on just one.

For Muni I think maybe 10% of Downhill Riders realy like to go for uphill while in X/C you can find a lot of Road racers as they like the endurance skill... For sure you have some riders that are good in Up and Downhill and in X/C but its a hand full maybe or less. You already target that Problem in your last sentence "But there is one problem! how to classify riders who compete in different categories, i.e. standard and unlimited at the same discipline?"
Riders would maybe join other categories just to collect points for the Overall Title which would work against the Idee of having usefull categories where riders on mostly the same level ride together.

Thats why I like the Idea of inventing one or two sets of Multiathlon and dislike the Idea to place one more Overall Champion in the rulebook, I would more like to delete also the overall race champion.

However, as I see several riders like the Idea of having a Multiathlon, I will talk with Scott about opening a seperate committee for it to start creating a usefull and intersting set of disciplines. So the discussions wont interact as its two different decissions to have Multi Athlons and to have Overall whatever Champions.

Comment 12 Dec 06:56

I made some statistic from the UNICON 17,

There is 8 people who were 3 times in top 10 among 4 disciplines (DH,XC,Uphill,CX). - it looks like there is bunch of elite riders who perform best in all disciplines
All Muni gold medalists (XC,DH,UpH,CX) were at least 3 times in the top ten among 4 disciplines. - Does "more riders focus on just one discipline" ? I know, that they focus, but good technique in one discipline helps in other.

Making both: Overall Muni Champion and Multiathlon is not necessary, because it will be propably the same rider receiving two awards.

Comment 12 Dec 07:29

8 riders make not even 3% of the Riders start in Downhill (294 riders all over). But good to have a number, confirms more or less my theory that we talk about a hand full of riders (nearly 2 hands ;) ).

To make Overall Muni Champion and to make MultiAthlon would make sense as it is about two completely different things (Multiathlon can contain a lot of different disciplines). MultiAthlon must not / should not be limited to Muni disciplines, it should more cover the full range of unicycling.

Overall Champion: a simple calculation of event results to produce another additional title while the riders participate in those events anyway.

MultiAthlon: a new discipline that could target a lot of riders (like Biathlon, Triathlon / Decathlon ... know from other sports)

Comment 12 Dec 09:11

Now I understand you, Olaf :) As muliathlon you mean to gather muni plus non muni disciplines. Than it really should be on seperate commitee.

Comment 12 Dec 09:15

There seem to be two issues being discussed here: 1) should we "officialize" Overall Muni Champion, and 2) should we create a "multi-athlon"? In the interest of keeping things organized, what about keeping this thread for talking about #1, and create a new one to discuss #2?

I don't believe that "Overall Champions" add a lot of value to the event. We are basically giving extra medals to people who are already winning medals without the riders having to compete again. Maksym's comments above "Overall Muni Champion...not necessary, because it will be propably the same rider receiving two awards" seem dead-on to me.

Comment 12 Dec 10:04

I already start a seperate committee for MultiAthlon and add some view members to split this things as I wrote before. just email to rulebook@unicycling.org if you want to join that new committee to discuss about a nice set of disciplines and if it should be done or not in general.

Comment 12 Dec 15:22

In the context of the Overall Mountain Unicycling Champion, if it is accepted, there will need to be a lot of consideration in how the events are weighted to get to the title. Simply going by the same points for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. in each discipline could put a lot of weight on an event that wasn't the best it possibly could have been according to the venues available for the Unicon. This has been a problem for NAUCC. Due to the nature of available courses one year the DH race was less than 15 seconds long. The uphill was roughly 20. These were weighted equally against the XC. It skewed the points significantly in favor of the very short event.

With a Unicon, the venues should be world class. Hopefully the courses would not be the problem. If there is significant interest in making this title a part of the IUF Rulebook, there will need to be a lot of discussion about scoring between the disciplines.

As far as the MultiAthlon goes, it does sound like an interesting idea.

Comment 12 Dec 23:38

I like the idea of having overall muni 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, etc.).

Comment 13 Dec 05:20

I would like to have an overall ranking for muni because it is an encouragement to be good at different aspects of muni riding. Many riders enjoy riding multiple disciplines and can't focus so much on a single discipline compared to someone who specializes in a certain discipline. As a result, the multi-discipline rider will (in theory) be not as good as the specialist in a certain category. By awarding an overall title, also the multi-discipline rider has a chance to shine. I would go as far as not only determining one overall champion but also releasing the overall ranking of all riders (unlike at Unicon 17). Also important to mention is that overall rankings have been established in several other sports, for example climbing and skiing.

1) Regarding the weighting of the disciplines I would say:
DH 50%
XC 40%
Uphill 10%
First of all, DH and XC are the most important disciplines and should be given most weight. If you give DH less than 50%, most likely the XC riders will get the trophy because they are also good uphill riders. I am not saying that DH is more important than XC, just that XC and Uphill have more in common than DH and Uphill. In any case I would like to avoid giving the title to someone who did not participate in DH or XC.

Why only these 3 disciplines and not cyclocross, muni obstacles or something else? Consistency I would say. These 3 are well established and if you add others, you always have to change the weights.

2) Do we need a point system to award, e.g., 100 points for 1st place in a certain discipline, 70 for 2nd, 50 for 3rd, 40 for 4th,... when calculating the overall ranking? Probably, because otherwise it is not clear what to do with riders who did not compete, for instance, in Uphill. Such a point system would be easy to copy from another sport and we could test it using the results of past Unicons.

3) Regarding different categories: there should be one male and one female overall ranking, age categories should be ignored. If a disciplines has unlimited and something like a 24/26 inch only category, only the unlimited category should count towards the overall rankin. The reason is that usually the best and most dedicated riders in a discipline would start in unlimited. (Personally, I am against having categories based on equipment but that is another discussion.)

Comment 13 Dec 17:07

While I agree that it make sense to delete all Overall Champions there is at least one big difference that was already told here. While on the race track the conditions are always simmilar and so the set of race results can be weighted 1 to 1, Muni races are very differnet. You find ideal conditions with all 3 competitions on same high level but you find also often good X/C and bad Downhill or great Downhill and bad X/C and same for uphill. Often it depends simply on the location itself, not on bad planning by the host. So even with a good weighting in theory you can't match that differences.

The effect that Ben come up with (riders that just like many disciplines and not focus on only one) would be better covered with one or several MultiAthlon titles then with the all over Champions.

Comment 14 Dec 01:45

Lots of good discussion here. One of the things that floated to the top for me was about the question of how to score the different events. Unlike Track, where the major difference between one convention and the next is the weather, with MUni the terrain changes dramatically. Depending on the venues available to run races, you may have a spectacular XC course, an OK Uphill course and a terrible Downhill course. Let's say you are having Unicon in Florida, which has no mountains (or even big hills) within a reasonable distance.

The point being that the relationship of those three traditional events to each other may change from one convention to the next. A fixed method of scoring might not be appropriate. But, on the other hand, actual competition courses are often not known until the last minute, and may change even then due to weather. So how to determine their values? I don't have a good answer to that. It should probably be based on how the courses each are in relation to the "optimal" version of such a course. Is it long enough? Challenging enough? each compared to the other two. This can be a basis for creating a relationship of each course's value.

Comment 14 Dec 02:06

In my opinion if we want to really have such title, the calculation for points should be 1- as easy as possible and not relative or subjective and 2- should allow for easy addition of new competition.

I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the value of CX to such a title if a host would decide to have it during a Unicon. Such a overall title should very much take into consideration ALL muni competitions, and not just some that we considered in 2014 that they were "worthy" of being counted.

Even tho we did add such a title during Unicon 17, I would be in favor of delete it and replace it with Multi-Athlon. In my opinion we are giving enough titles per discipline with age groups and expert. Overall is a cool concept, but is hard to establish and hard to make evaluate as new competition rise. On the other hand, I like Olaf proposition of Multi-Athlon as it could very well encourage riders of certain type of athletic ability (for example, long distance riding) to explore other competitions of different disciplines instead of just staying in their favorite one.

Side note on "optional" things from the rulebook (this is really just my opinion here btw): I would love to see more continuity from Unicon to Unicon regarding titles, rules and such. It's great that Unicon host can add more event and add their own personal touch, but I think that in the future we should try to have categorization of results, age groups, overall ranking and such, as identical as possible from one Unicon to an other to help data comparison. As such, overall title don't mean much after that Unicon if the next one is doing a different calcul or including new competitions to it.

Comment 15 Dec 13:40

So, to roughly summarize our discussion of whether Overall Muni Champion (OMC) should be added to the "official rulebook":

Some are for OMC, because it encourages riders to be good at multiple disciplines (ideally would not go to person who already won everything)
Some are against OMC, because it will likely go to someone who is already a top competitor in all disciplines
The goal of OMC, i.e., awarding someone who is well-rounded, could be achieved through a "multi-athlon" (discussion of MA in a different thread)
If we were to eliminate OMC, we would need to do it across all disciplines for consistency
A permanent point distribution of proposed Overall would be very difficult to determine because tracks vary UNICON to UNICON based on location and weather
Distribution of points, in general, would be very difficult to determine
OMC should also consider muni obstacles, Cyclocross, etc.

Skimming through the current discussion, we have 2 in favor (Maksym S., Ben S.), 5 against (John F., Olaf S., Phil S., Marco S., and Jenni R.), and 3 commenters (Dave K, Jamey M., and Benoit G.-D.). ("Commenter" just means I couldn't figure out if you were for, against, or neither. Sorry if I got this wrong.)

Rather than get into the nitty-gritty details of ironing out the point distribution, I feel it'd be better to answer the question first -- do we want OMC in the official rulebook? If the answer is yes, then we can take the time to determine a distribution. If not, then we save ourselves a lot of time and effort. Does this sound reasonable?

Comment 15 Dec 13:51

Excellent summary. Thanks Jenni.

Comment 15 Dec 13:55

Yes, you did a great job!!! As my opinion is already stated in your summary, I guess we need the opinion of the commenters now to see what the majority want.

Comment 15 Dec 14:31

Thanks for the discussions and summary.

If I'm to give my personal opinion (moving out of just commenter status), I'm strongly opposed to an overall title. But, I'm not doing Rulebook work to further my own interests so I try to keep an open mind as much as possible.

Based upon experiences with the NAUCC overall titles, I think we're getting closer to a fair system, but it has become much more complicated than an easy assign points to placing and a particular discipline. NAUCC does have a smaller pool of riders which has demonstrated that these systems have flaws. With Unicon having a much bigger pool of participants, things that have happened may be exceptions, but nonetheless have not furthered the cause of the Overall title in some instances.

It's difficult to quickly describe some of the situations that have happened over the years, but it could be done if it is necessary when we get to scoring if the title becomes a possibility.

Sorry if being a commenter has caused a bit of confusion on this. I've done some work and a significant amount of thinking to make an equitable scoring work. Scott's been a big help with that as well. The NAUCC 2014 took some steps towards it- in the Road Racing category thanks to the efforts of Garrett Macey. Even then though there was some confusion among others about implementation.

One of the chief concerns I have with an overall title is that if it is to be implemented, and it is not an unbiased system (or very close to it), it may devalue the individual world titles in the disciplines. Not to do too much of dragging bicycling into it, but I'm not aware of a world champion in Downhill, XC, Slalom, and Enduro combination. World Champions in cycling are for specific disciplines generally.

Again, I'm trying to remain objective. I hope it appears that way when this is read.

Comment 15 Dec 14:44

Oh! Just to be clear, I didn't mean any criticism when I classified people as "commenter", I just wanted to make sure that your contribution was noted while not putting words in your mouth.

We now have 2 in favor (Maksym S., Ben S.), 6 against (John F., Olaf S., Phil S., Marco S., Jenni R., and Dave K.), and 2 commenters (Jamey M. and Benoit G.-D.). ("commenter" is someone who has contributed to the discussion but is not clearly for or against.)

Comment 15 Dec 14:56

Absolutely no criticism was taken. Sorry if there seemed like an overreaction.

I'm not trying to drag other areas into this, but it's been a problem I've had with other rulebooks, not the IUF.

If we're in the process of rules, we should make good ones. Based upon my experiences, there is a good chance that Overall Champion scoring will exhibit a bias- especially if the courses change venue to venue as they do in Muni.

I think if it comes to writing this rule, it will be incredibly difficult to make a fair scoring system.

Comment 15 Dec 15:03

I have not decided yet for being favor or against OMC, but if UNICON host awards with this title the rules should be clear and fixed in rulebook.

I have never heard of overall mountain cyclist champion in bicycle world. I thinkin about different thing. I think, it is more importnat to have a better shape of XC race, which will revelal DH, uphill, and XC skills.

Comment 18 Dec 17:23

I am in favor of having OCM but I might be biased as my main discipline is muni and I like the concept of having an award for the best overall muni rider. I think that NAUCC had a good system last year regarding what points/percentages were awarded. Of course not perfect but a good place to start.

If the majority of people want to not have OCM, I am OK with that but I just think that if that is the case then no unicycle disciplines should have an overall champion. Why should road riders or track riders have one and not muni riders? Cause it's easier to figure out the point system?

Comment 19 Dec 06:45

Jamey, I agree that if we decide against OCM, then we should also remove the overall from Road Racing. Track is a very different discipline and I think it actually makes a lot of sense there.

Comment 19 Dec 09:12

I think the category 'Overall Muni Champion' uses very loaded words to describe someone who may or may not be the best at everything, but is the best all-round rider across several different disciplines.

Having 'Overall' in front of the word 'Champion', gives the impression that the person who wins the best all-round rider award is held in higher esteem to someone who is merely 'XC World Champion' or 'DH World Champion', when clearly it is not be the case. The 'Overall Muni Champion' might have, for instance, come 5th or 6th in all different categories, and not even attained a medal.

If a all-round category is formed, it must not be held in higher regard to each individual discipline, and should not use those words to describe the category.

Instead, something like the 'MUni Points Champion' would be more appropriate.

I disagree with Bens assertion that some disciplines are more important than others. Who are we to judge? Particularly as some people on this rulebook compete in and will be biased towards their own discipline. In the mountainbike world, would you consider that XC is less important than DH and therefore weighted 40%/50%? I think you'd get some pretty upset XC riders.

Comment 19 Dec 09:45

I very much agree with Jamey.

In any case, I am very skeptical about MultiAthlon as a replacement for an overall muni ranking (see my comment in the MultiAthlon group). It is something very different and I am not sure if it is even possible within the Unicon frame.

Further, I would like to know from the people that are currently against OMC: Would you prefer to have no rules at all (meaning the organizers can do what they want, also very biased determinations of OMC) or do you want a rule that prohibits the determination of OMC once for all.

Comment 19 Dec 10:02

@Ken: By determining the weighting, it's very important to see how popular a discipline is, i.e. how many riders in general, how many competitors etc.; I think we can agree that DH and XC are the most important ones. An equal weighting of all muni disciplines is biased, at Unicon 17 for example in favor of the XC guys. If you read my comment, you'll see that I never say that DH > XC. In my opinion, you could even use 50% DH and 50% XC. I say that even though my best results were in Uphill ;)

And about the term "overall": I don't care so much how it is called, but "overall" is used in many other sports.

Comment 19 Dec 10:10

@Ben: I definitely do NOT want a rule that prohibits OMC. That would be silly. If the event organizers want to create one, I think that's great and it should happen. I just don't think it needs to be a required event in the rulebook right now.

Comment 19 Dec 11:54

I don't think Overall titles belong in Muni or Road Racing.

I don't think we should make a rule prohibiting it though.

Unless a host wants to put a lot of work in making system as fair as possible, I'd discourage hosts from awarding the titles.

Comment 19 Dec 18:11

Ken provide some very good arguments. There should be no Overall Muni World Champion and also no Overall Road Race World Champion. In track races it is a bit different as you have to reach at least in all those disciplines the final heats to get an option for that title while I wont be againt deleting also this overall title.

This not means that a host should be blocked form creating something like the King of the Hill or whatever special price. I remeber a Muni weekend on Switzerland where they did the "King of the Hill" title which was given by a jury and it was a result of good riding and fair sportsmanship and all over behaviour and Mr. Schlumpf give a Hub as price for it. Stuff like this is great and a good option to get private Sponsors involved as they can name the Trophy and the rules can be defined wider than just based on result a, b, c and d devided to 4

The World Champions of each single event should get maximum honer, same for nationals and continental champions. there should be no other rider that looks simmilar succesfull for the audience while maybe dont get a single podium (as Ken state already).

Everybody who rides for some years should know how easy it is to get some Medail in unicycle events and how difficult it is to got a World Champion Medail!

Comment 20 Dec 15:00

"By determining the weighting, it's very important to see how popular a discipline is, i.e. how many riders in general, how many competitors etc.; I think we can agree that DH and XC are the most important ones." -- Which means what? That Uphill is harder than the other two, and maybe people just don't like it? Or they don't like it because it's slow? But those are not necessarily reasons to give it less weight. Since we often will not know what our actual race courses will be until the last minute (due to loss of venue, weather, etc.), it is impossible to weight them in advance. Even if we did, the weighting would be arbitrary. Since the courses are different every time, why not just use the Track method, and give each event equal value? It would save a ton of work, and would accurately represent the actual courses that were used, rather than whether or not the weighting matched the way the courses turned out.

Again I'll bring up the example of the Unicon 14 XC race. Kudos to the organizers for working in the race, but the trail was just impossible for several hundred riders to actually race on. I was stuck in the middle of a huge traffic jam, with virtually no possiblity to pass in the first half of the course. Was this the course the organizers wanted? I'm sure it wasn't but I don't think it was even the mountain they wanted. It was the place they could get, and it took them a very long time to get it.

Perhaps the Unicon 14 example is not a good one for ranking. The winners of that race were the fast riders that had the best starting positions. Nobody else had a chance. But if you were to determine a weighting for the events, it couldn't be figured out in advance. You have to know what the courses are, and their condition on race day (dry or mud? grass or tall weeds?).

Comment 20 Dec 15:05

I wanted to separate out a post about naming. Ken brought up something that has been an issue in the past with Track champions at USA conventions. "Overall" implies that the generalist is somehow better than the winners of each individual event, but I don't think that should be the intent. That rider wins an award for being versatile, while being "very good". Each individual event winner is the best at that event. I would rank them equally. So "Overall" should not be the title.

In the past, the USA (Unicycling Society of America) has used "Top Point Winner" or equally awkward names for that title, but they suck. The don't read well, and they don't sound very substantial. The press takes no notice of them. I can prove this with examples if anyone cares. Do we care about press coverage? We should. I believe it's implied in our charter.

Anyway, I recommend calling it "Combined Muni World Champion", to stand proudly beside Uphill, Cross Country and Downhill World Champions.

Comment 23 Dec 06:37

I think 'combined champion' is better but still gives a hint of superiority over the individual titles. Any other suggestions?

Comment 23 Dec 10:34

I'm still open to ideas but to me, Combined is a clear label for what it is, while to me it doesn't infer superiority. At the USA we've used "Top Point Winner" and similar in the past, but those names are just ugly. As the owners of NAUCC, the USA is expert at ugly names. :-)

Plus, Top Point Winner still infers superiority. I know the word Combined from some other sports, possibly skiing, where it was always clear to me that this was someone who won something by adding several events together, and not necessarily the winner of any of those events.

Or we could make up a new word, but the problem with that is that we don't get much opportunity to explain such things to a press that often doesn't listen well. As many of us have learned over the years of trying to publicize this sport, many journalists will just write what they want, and use a few of our quotes in there somewhere. So I recommend trying to use names that are relate-able to other sports people can recognize.

Comment 24 Dec 03:17

I like "Combined" very much. It describes well what it is about, is easy to understand, and doesn't implicate that it's more important than the individual titles.

Comment 24 Dec 18:33

Combined sounds good to me. And I like the idea Foss said about having equal weights between all three events (XC, DH and Uphill).

Comment 25 Dec 07:29

"I think 'combined champion' is better but still gives a hint of superiority over the individual titles"

This is maybe the main Problem which wont be solved by changing overall to combined. For sure a host should be free to provide those results but it shouldnt be the combined World Champion or the Overall World Champion then, it should be a seperate trophy / title / result which is clearly seperated from the individual titles.

About weighting, I see no other option then to weight them all equal. Any other decission would be strange and provide an even more strange result.

Comment 29 Dec 10:09

If this is to progress to the stage of weighting, the weighting system must account for placing and timing differentials. After seeing the mess potential this can be at the NAUCC level, I'm still against a combined champion if this is reduced to a simple points for placing without accounting for timing differentials.

I still believe there's a danger in awarding the overall with equal weighting. Just as an example, Uphill and Downhill are very short compared to XC. They could be dominated by a technical rider who is not geared towards endurance. The point system will have to account for riders finishing all events well.

In some past NAUCCs, under a simplified points per place system with equal weighting in all events, we've had competitors finish first in a very short downhill (15 seconds), not finish the XC, not place in Uphill, and nearly make 3rd place on the Overall podium over riders who finished in the top 3 in the XC and complete all events with top 5 in Uphill and top 10 in Downhill. In Road Racing with 4 events, we've had similar situations with riders not completing the Marathon.

I'm not in favor of the title, but if it goes through, a fair scoring system must be devised.

Comment 30 Dec 15:47

The system of weighting / scoring is the main problem here I think. Every competiton offer usually a different level of each Muni discipline, mostly based on the physical options the location offer. How can a scoring system work with this unclear conditions? Who will decide if a 4k less technicl DH is higher / lower scored then a 1k hardcore technicl one, if a short but very steep uphil os more or less difficult then a less steep but longer one, who decide about the X/C races differences. We just start to develop a system to classify DH tracks which is a ot of work and far awy from beeing perfect, To make a fair scoring for overall Champion we would need a system to classify X/Cs and Uphills also and all tracks per competition has to be classified then to be able to adjust the score in a fair way.

Thats why I see right now the only chance to weight them simmilar while Dave is right that this wont end in a fair result usually. So I still think that actually a overall Champion make no sense.

Comment 30 Dec 17:14

I still think that they should all be equal weights. Shouldn't make a difference if it's an easy or short XC, uphill or DH. The best rider should still win no matter what the courses are. There are three things that make a good muni rider; climbing, technical DH and endurance. I think they are all important and all equal. Just because someone is good at endurance and climbing doesn't make them better than someone who is good at uphill and DH.

Comment 31 Dec 01:11

They must be equal weights, for the reasons Olaf just mentioned above, and others. Not only will each course be different from venue to venue, they are also affected by weather, possibly by the amount of riders, and possibly by last-minute needs to change venue. Any attempt to objectively quantify such variable courses would tend to not be accurate. Fair is not the word I would use, as "fair" means properly and accurately executing the rules that exist.

The courses will always be different. They are supposed to be different. And they will never be equal to each other. But this has always been the case. A Combined award would be just that; combining results from those events -- as they are -- and rewarding the person who averaged best in them. Like each individual race/course, it is only relevant to that particular tournament. It can't event be accurately compared to another race on the same course at a different time, as the weather may be different. Mountain courses change to to erosion. Each competition is unique unto itself.

So I'm okay with a "Combined Muni" title, as an *optional* event. It is still relevant. It just isn't relevant to the same title from the next or previous convention.

Comment 07 Jan 11:30

I'm not going to weigh in on naming convention or weighting here because I don't think this should be a required event and so it should be left up to the organizers. :D

Comment 08 Jan 03:06

You are right Jenny and to just add it nowhere will solve two problems.

It will be not an official title then, so the individual World Campions will be in focus and not set equal or worse in relation to an OverAll World Champion as this not exist then.

Whatever weighting system will be used can be decided then by a host who decide to creat some over all title. He can pick the disciplines he want and the weighting and he can name it "King of the Hill" or "Master of desaster" or however he / his sponsor like it.