7T: I'm sorry to hear of your heartbreaking landout, especially from such a good position. Time to show great sports psychology and go win tomorrow!

It's a great example of the IGC rules issue: Only landout, a few km short: 330 points. Only finisher, everyone else a few km short: they get 999 points. Now you know why "stick with the gaggle" is so vital in IGC scoring. Better to land out with the gaggle than to take any risk in order to be the only finisher.

US scoring isn't perfect either. It also switches from speed to distance points in a complex way depending on landouts.

Heres my current best suggestion:

points = (day devaluation factor) max ( 1000 x speed / winner's speed, 750 x distance / winner distance)

the day devaluation factor doesn't matter here. What matters is speed vs. distance points. And the key -- they are fixed, irrespective of the number of landouts.

So, only finisher gets 1000, 1 km landout gets 750. Only landout gets 750. The incentive to be lone wolf goes way up.

It works as now if you're really slow. If you are below 75% of the winner's speed, you get 750 points for finishing. You always get the better of speed and distance.

And real simple too. People might (gasp) actually understand their score! And strategy. No more need for team captains to report landouts to tell you if it's a speed day or distance day.

it gets rid of some other IGC idiosyncrasies too, like the occasional incentive to deliberately land out.

John Cochrane