MultiAthlon basics (Closed for comments)
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As there seems to be an interest in creating one or several Multi Athlons, lets start to exchange Ideas. I will create a seperate discussion to list just ideas of good discipline combinations, this is about the general idea and how to embedd them.
I think that participants for a Multi Athlon can compite in the same competitions that are done anyway but maybe it would be better and more interesting if they get their own runs where it is easy possible.
Another question is if a Rider that register for a Multi Athlon shuld be allowed to also compete in all his disciplines as a single rider and if yes, does his one attempt count or must he do it two times, one tme for MultiAthlon and one time for single event. Sounds like stupid burocracy but it has to be decided. I have no Idea how it is in other Sports and at least I dont care about. Typically a Multi Athlet is not able to win in single disciplines as he is focused on MultiAthlon. Sometimes they have one discipline where they are on a higher level but the main trick is to be able to manage a set of different stuff and to be good in all of it :) So a Downhill rider has to do highjump for example ...
Im excited about all comments/ideas here
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Just to clarify: Is a multiathlon held separately from individual competitions or just a ranking based on the results riders achieve in individual competitions? If it is the former, then is it even realistic to organize such events considering the tight schedule of unicons? For instance, would a marathon competition (or Muni XC, etc..) be carried out twice, once for the individual discipline and then again as part of a multiathlon? That would seem like a huge logistic and organizational challenge.
If a multiathlon is just a ranking without additional competitions, however, we should stick with overall rankings (muni overall, track overall, etc.) in my opinion.
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It's definitely just rankings, just like the Decathlon at the Olympics.
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@Scott
The decathlon is seperate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decathlon
For us i think there is only one way to go: ranking only
Everything else would be horrible to organize and wont find many riders to compete... nobody wants to do a marathon twice in one day for example
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But what is the advantage compared to an overall ranking for muni, track, etc.? You have even greater difficulties selecting (!) and then weighting the disciplines. For muni, for example, all the disciplines are related, the same for track. But with a Multiathlon, it seems so random. You could as well take every single discipline and compute and overall best unicyclist ranking. Good luck in weighting the disciplines ;)
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The question is: Do we want a decathlon or not?
If yes, everything should be held on one or two days (see decathlon wikipedia). I kind of like the idea to find the best "allround" unicyclist.
For example:
Day 1:
100m , Highjump, Downhill, 10k, 3 shot basketball
Day 2:
1500m, standard skill, uphill, slow backward, 1 hour trials
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Sorry,
Marco is correct.
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I gues it depends on the options of a host how good he can separate competitions. For track it will be easy to do seperate heats for the decathlon riders. Usually a decathlon athlete Start for decathlon, not for single events. His chalenge is to manage all 10 disciplines the besr way which is difficult and need multiple skills and trainings to cover sprint and endurance and jumping and tricks for example. A decathlon or what ever Multiathlon is a seperate discipline. To find a good way to embed it into a Competition is another point and Marco already show that it would be possible for sure.
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Form my observation we have two types of riders in unicycle Sport. One group is starting as a kid doing races. Then they start doing tricks and other stuff and went into freestyle or trials or muni ... Those riders typically have a wide range of skills after several years. The other group Start typically later and focus on one discipline mostly. Multiathlon is for sure atractive for group one as they usually done 90% of the discipline while their unicycle career. For group two it can be a new challange to look over the plate border. As the multi discipliners lost more and more room those days, multiathlon can bring back that spirit.
Maybe this explain a bit the motivation behind multiathlon and its targets.
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To introduce a Decathlon-type event, it would probably be best to collect the data from the "regular" events. This would be logistically MUCH easier than organizing separate competitions for each, especially if anyone starts talking about age groups! If the event gets popular, it might be worth running it as its own competition, like they do in the Olympics.
As for ranking, I'd start with something simple. Perhaps weighing the events using a couple of basic factors, such as time needed to complete them. For example, the 100m race is short. A Marathon race takes a much more sustained effort to complete. Obviously that is an incomplete solution, but I think we should start out simple; perhaps as simple as giving them all equal weight at first.
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I would generally like to rank every single discipline similar but I will check how it is in other sports like Triathlon or Decathlon.
About collecting data from "regular"events, we have to check them discipline by dicipline. All track races can easy do seperate heats for the Multiathlon for example, that wont cost a second. jumps could have their seperate jump station, eats also no time ... To have it focused on 2 days, as Marco suggested, would be a dream.
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I research a bit about the weighting of classic decathlon and they use not a bad system. The give points per discipline that base on the actual World record per discipline. So each discipline seems to be weighted simmilar, it depends on how close you are to the World Record / a defined Top result. I like this idea of weighting as it set the decathlon results in relation to the results of top level sngle athlets and provide every rider simmilar chances, independent where he has his good and bad disciplines as long as he has enough good ones ;) This sounds much better for me then to decide what discipline is more difficult or higher graded ...
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I'm not sold on having a Multiathon. Sounds like it would be a lot more work for organizers and for what, just to hand out another award? For the best overall unicyclist? This would just encourage more people to enter races that they don't necessarily like or are good at. Thus making Unicon events take longer and be more time consuming. Just think if all the muni riders now started doing track...might double the current track racers. Just throwing it into the mix as something to keep in mind. Unicons are already crunched for time so this would just make it worse.
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I lean toward Jamey's point of view on the effect of more people registering to competition they would not have registered to else. Unicon's calendar are getting very problematic, I could honestly go on forever on that subject.
Also, I would suggest that if we do build Multiathon, they should be based on similar physiological ability, for example:
Endurance-athlon: Muni Cross-Country, CycloCross, 42km, 100km and other events that require muscle effort during a long amount of time
Stamina-athlon: 100m, 200m, 400m, 10km, Muni DH, and other events that require maximum muscle intensity during a relatively short amount of time
Strength-athlon : Jumps, Street, Trials & Speed trials, Muni Obstacles and other events that require a maximum amount of muscle effort in one movement
Technical & Precision: X-Style, Flatland and other events that are more based on skill ability rather than cardiovascular capacity.
These combination in my opinion make more sens as they share something in common and are events that a lot of riders already do because of it.
B.
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I personally can't see a good way to organize a MultiAthlon competition within a Unicon frame.
Ideally you have all competitions of a multiathlon on one or two day, right after each other, at the same location. For example: any biathlon, triathlon, decathlon.
First the problem of location. Take Unicon 17, for example. Muni is several hours away from the city, the locations for track, urban and road are also separated by almost 1h each. This leads to the second problem: At Unicon 17, a multiathlon would have been spread out over several days. It would have come down to doing the multiathlon XC part on the day as the individual XC competion, the multiathlon marathon on the same day as the individual marathon, and so on. However, who wants to do the same race twice on the same day? Almost no one.
Following this train of thought, there are only two options:
1) Calculate the multiathlon rankings from the individual results. This only makes sense for disciplines which are really related to each other. For example, all muni, or all track competitions. Otherwise the selection of disciplines is way too arbitrary to make any sense.
2) Severely restrict the amount and type of disciplines within a multiathlon. Realistic would be, for instance, to have 100m, 400m, slalom, high and long jump. These competitions could be done at the same location and on the same day. However, in this case, the multiathlon is only interesting to a specific group of riders. It would not give credit to riders who are good at several very different disciplines (but that was a principle aim of multiathlon, wasn't it?).
In the muni commettee, MultiAthlon was proposed as a replacement for determining an overall muni champion. In this respect:
Case 1) Don't call it multiathlon, stick with overall muni champion (same for track, etc.).
Case 2) In this form, a multiathlon can be organized, but would have nothing to do with an overall muni championship and therefore cannot be seen as a replacement.
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Multiathlon is just a place holder here for different ideas how it can be done. Benoit came up with good options how to group disciplines which will end in tri to fithatlons, the decathlon thing is more a crossover thing.
Beside this it can't be told enough that we do here rules for Unicicle competitons, not only for Unicons and not special for Unicons. This was decided many years ago and every time in the committe I see people arguing only about how this or that can work for a Unicon. It can be fun for example to just do a Multiathlon competiton if they exist. It must not happen at a Unicon but it can. Also the problem of time does not realy exist. Those days Unicons in Europe come close to a critical size anyway so several people already think about splitting them into groups (can be discipline related or can be Junior / Senior). Nobody want this realy but if the sport grow, there will be no other option than to go for strict qualification or to split it.
"Calculate the multiathlon rankings from the individual results. This only makes sense for disciplines which are really related to each other. For example, all muni, or all track competitions. Otherwise the selection of disciplines is way too arbitrary to make any sense."
This is not true. As discribed before, in decathlon you get points per discipline based on the existing World Record which can be also base on the Top result in each Single Event. Ther eis no wheighting as there exist no better or worse discipline. All are great and same wheighted, it depends how good you are in each related to a Top rider in each. In Decathlon it is 8000 point or more you can get, so 800 and more per discipline which offer a good range of scaling.
"In the muni commettee, MultiAthlon was proposed as a replacement for determining an overall muni champion. In this respect:
Case 1) Don't call it multiathlon, stick with overall muni champion (same for track, etc.).
Case 2) In this form, a multiathlon can be organized, but would have nothing to do with an overall muni championship and therefore cannot be seen as a replacement."
Benoit write already down possible types of a Multiathlon that can replace Overall Muni Champion. A Decathon wont do that but it is possible to crearte a quadathlon or fithathlon that target the group of Riders that could be also OverAll Muni Champion.
Finaly if we find one or more nice sets of Multiathlons, non of them should be a must for a host, they can be done optional like many other disciplines are. If people like them, they happen usually, if people hate them, they will die.
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The one form of multiathlon that sounds interesting to me is the idea of a Decathlon. Decathlon is a very cool Olympic event, which recognizes all-around good athletics. In the Olympics it's a separate set of competitions, but that would be very burdensome for today's level of unicycle conventions, even at the Unicon level. So for most of it, I think it would make sense to get results from the "regular" versions of the events. Based on earlier discusiions, those events can't be team sports or subjectively judged events (Freestyle, Flat, X-Style). You could use Standard Skill results, but I'd rather not. Some of the events could be special ones for only the Decathlon contestants. Those could be held all on the same day. It would probably have to be near the end of the overall convention, to gather the results from the main competitions. Then, like a Finals event in a Track race, the Decathlon finalists would be known. They would then be invited to join in those final, special events.
I don't know if this belongs in the "Dream Multiathlon" discussion or not...
Benoit's suggestions for similar-event-athlons are fine, but seem kind of repetitive; not as interesting to me.