On Sep 23, 11:35*am, toad wrote:

But long time pilots that fly low level equipment must be able to win,
if they are flying the best at that contest.

Todd -

This is where I probably break from the pack and earn a few enemies:
I completely disagree with you on this. I used to make the same
argument you are using, back in my auto-racing days. I fought mightily
for rules to allow anyone with any budget to have an equal shot at
winning. And as someone who's worked in the games and entertainment
industry I also used to strive for that kind of equality in things
like collectible card games where more money can make a big
difference...

But the bottom-line is that I've never ever seen a successful program
that makes someone's budget irrelevant. And many of the attempts to
do so have been big failures that have had negative impacts on the
whole sport or competition that they were designed to help.

I'm all for simple and reasonable efforts to make the competition fair
- but there's no way to make it 100% level across all equipment and to
force the guy with the fat wallet to compete with no more advantage
than the guy on a shoestring - and I say this as someone who's usually
competing on a shoestring! :-P

The "Nimbus 3 vs. ASK-14" thing is ridiculous. People love to make
comparisons like this, but again this is a SPORT and this is
COMPETITON; at a National level in some of these cases/arguments. If
you put a high value on winning then you need to make the sacrifices
and choices in your life to compete at the highest possible level. If
you cannot compete at the absolute top level because of your budget,
then you do the best you can and you take the satisfaction that you
can get out of doing more with less... But screwing up the majority
of the racers just so a couple of people at the lowest level can
theoretically do better than people at the highest levels is wrong.
Don't target the slim majority at the top OR the bottom - target the
middle and upper-middle ranges, the majority of your competitors. If
they're reasonably competitive against each other, then your system is
doing what it is supposed to do.

Look at an individual sport like Bowling or Golf: Do you really think
that the handicap there makes everyone play at the same level? What
about the guy who can afford better clubs or a custom-drilled bowling-
ball? Does the handicap take that into account? No! There are
plenty of other examples of this, in sports that are highly successful
and have plenty of participation... These "unfair" sports haven't
stopped rookies from trying the sport or attempting to move up in
skill and equipment over time - why should it stop glider pilots?


The problem is that the handicapping should really depend on the
weather conditions, a single number handicap only works well within a
small range of handicaps. *Especially for a weather driven sport.

Except that the exact combination of weather conditions is always
changing and never exactly identical. That's one of the reasons this
sport is so challenging, afterall! So how do you come up with
standards or metrics on something like that? And don't think that it
only matters for gliders with hugely different performance numbers...
My DG-300 came with big ballast bags; does that mean I should have a
worse handicap than a DG-300 with small ballast bags on strong days?
Or what if specific conditions favor a DuoDiscus over a DG-1000? Or a
DG-1000T over a Duo X but NOT a DG-1000 over a standard Duo? How
finely do you want to slice this, and how insanely complicated do you
end up making the rules as a result?

I return to my original argument: You handicap to give folks in
various equipment with equivalent skills a SHOT at doing well. And
you hold the competition over multiple days to try to average out the
weather and the luck factor - that's the way its ALWAYS been (even
before handicapped classes).

Take care,

--Noel