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On Sep 23, 7:26*am, Frank wrote:
Do we, as an organization, really want to be biasing the 'Sporting Risk' equation in that direction? TA Exactly my concern with this rule, too. I understand your arguments, John; they make a fair amount of sense... I don't want to reward someone who "took it easy" because their glider has long legs. But a big part of me also thinks its just weird to reward someone who didn't make it around the course! Even though ATs, TATs, and MATs are all very different, they start with the core idea that you have a start, some waypoints, and a finish. And the overriding theme is to make it around the course and to the finish. Screwing up that fundamental "getting to the finish" part can be interpreted as a bad performance and/or bad decision-making. I don't want to reward that, simply because the pilot has big cojones and is willing to fly into a bad situation on the gamble that he or she will rack up more distance points than others before hitting the dirt. And when does one "flip the switch" mentally, to go for that instead of speed points? Would it be on the worst of days, when everyone's cutting the task really short (isn't this when we usually see MATs called most-often, too)? That's when we want to encourage people to strike out on their own? hrrm... Also: What other sport defines a course and a finish, but gives some people more credit if they DON'T cross the finish-line? Like I said befo It seems to me that we're turning the system on its ear. We're moving away from "the course" as the underlying foundation, and moving towards "speed and distance are more important than the course"; which is a big shift IMHO. I'm not vehemently opposed to this, but I still am not comfortable with it. In some ways, it seems like a fix primarily for the Sports Class, since the "1-26 vs Nimbus4" argument only applies there. Performance levels are so much closer in the FAI classes, you're "fixing" anything (no one can use min-distance to gain a big advantage over others). In the FAI classes, the way I see it, you're flat-out shifting the focus of the TAT & MAT away from "fly the course and return at minimum time, go for max speed". You're moving the focus towards "make nominal (or greater) distance in a reasonable time without sacrificing much speed and if it starts to go bad screw getting home and make max distance you can". I see the "problem" with the current system; but if you view competition tasks through the lens of "complete the course, first and foremost" then its only a problem for the Sports Class with its wide performance-level variance. For the other classes its more about how you want to view tasks and what should be the _most-important_ criteria for judging someone's performance. Is it speed around the course and across the finish line? Or is it distance? --Noel P.S. BTW, since other threads on RAS are talking about the Worlds - just out of curiosity do any other countries (or the IGC) have scoring rules like this, wherein non-finishers can score higher than finishers? |
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