Lee Valley Prem 10 (British Open)

[boatmum]

Hi

Can someone clarify the results from the Lee Valley prem 10 race last Saturday please

The points have been allocated as per a normal prem race in the individuals athlete's profiles - ie points allocated in terms of position of British paddlers. However the position in the race has been given including the overseas guests.

Is this what was agreed or should the athlete's record be showing the position as per the prem race ie in line with the points allocated.

Thanks for clarifying

[BaldockBabe]

I think you need to look at it as two events happening on the same day.

1. A British Prem event - the competitors for this event were those in the British ranking system. These competitors were allocated their points according to their position within the British competitors only.

2. The British Open heats - these included all competitors, British or otherwise.

The results show the outcome of both "events" in one spreadsheet.

This is how it has been for the past few years, there have probably just been fewer overseas competitors so it has not been as obvious.

[boatmum]

Hi

Many thanks for that. The only thing I would say then is if the British Open "heats" are going to be shown on the individual athlete record then maybe so should the British Open semi finals and finals results ? for the sake of consistency? Same for races such as the McConkey maybe?

It is a very small thing I know and I have to confess I have no idea how much effort would be involved in doing this and the effort may well outweigh the benefit and therefore not be worth it

But I know many athletes use their individual results record on the canoe slalom site for sponsorship purposes so having a complete set of results or the UK ranking results only, rather than a mixture of results, might be worth looking at for the future?

[SilverSurfer]

I agree with Boatmum the position should be aligned to the points scored for the LV Prem race, and not the British Open position on Saturday. They are two separate events running in parallel.

Unlike the LV Prem/British Open, the McConkey race was a single event over two days, so the position/points are reflective of a premier paddlers finishing position and correct.

When calculating points/position for Prem races the "paddler up" paddlers are always removed/not included, so I don't see why the same wasn't done for the non Premier paddlers at the LV Prem race on the Saturday. The British Open is a separate race to the national premier race series and therefore should not be included as it is misleading.

It might be a small point, but not to those unfunded paddlers using the race information to help secure independent sponsorship.

[BaldockBabe]

When calculating points/position for Prem races the "paddler up" paddlers are always removed/not included,

.

The paddle ups are always included in the race results in the position that they came in, they are never removed from the results, just a NR is put into the points colum in the same way as the NR paddlers were done for the British Open. There is nothing misleading about how the results are portrayed, it is clear from looking at the points colum what the Prem position is...

For example Toni Boyd at the HPP event - she came 16th overall and is ranked as 16th in the results but then she is discounted for points. Same with Connor Lenihan at Cardiff who came 27th overall and is ranked 27th in the results but discounted for points.

I am sure if the paddlers wanted to use the results for sponsorship it would not be too diffult for them to extrapolate their Prem result as agains their British Open result...

[boatmum]

Hi

I see what your are saying and agree with regard to paddlers being able to interpret their results

However I think the point being made is that potential sponsors - who don't necessarily understand the results reporting system as well as participants - often want some sort of confirmation of what athletes are telling them and the canoe slalom individual athlete record on the site is a fab facility - thank you to whoever put it together! but could be confusing as it stands for someone outside the slalom community as it were.

However as I said before this is a small thing and is probably more hassle to adjust than it's worth and I am very obliged to the volunteers who manage the canoeslalom website - thank you !

[Granddad]

The results posted on the slalom web site for the 2013 British open included the points with NR against the international paddlers, so it was not a problem last year. Not including points in the results is not the usual method.

[BaldockBabe]

On that basis I think the comment you are making applies to ALL events not just the British Open. Perhaps if your paddler is usually near the top of the results you will not have noticed that the "ranking" is always with all the paddlers in that category within that event? Thus, the ranking will include paddle ups at other events and international paddlers at the British Open. Those usually lower down the rankings have probably noticed this earlier as they (at normal events) are most likey to be affected as paddle ups rarely affect the top places.

[boatmum]

Hi

Final post - please remember this was just a polite enquiry.

The data I'm most interested in is not the listings of race results but the data on the individual athlete's record.

[BaldockBabe]

Not an issue - interesting point to raise!

The atheletes profiles will have the ranking as per the results so again these will have been affected by paddle ups all year...

I suspect it is an automated upload system (at least I hope it is!) so it may be hard for Duncan/ Nick to seperate them out unless these are done by Andy/ Irene/ Mark at the the results stage and I am not sure that their software allows them to do that so it would have to be done manually...

[djberriman]

As some of you will know the rankings were purely to my knowledge done by nick pretty much by hand until a couple of years ago, what a massive effort by a volunteer it must have been and continues to be.

As again some of you will know I have been working with Nick over the last two years to deliver a more automated system and deliver a ranking database which not only provides those features that Nick's system did (and hopefully save him some work and time) but adds extra features like paddler records, history over divisons and years, plus data for the various parties that need it (including a year end report this year). This is a continuing process and this winter I will deliver extra facilties again for Nick and the bib officers and ranking officers as I did last year - back office stuff that none of you see!

I had already been thinking about a rolling 12 month ranking report for prem paddlers as it has been mentioned in the past with relation to sponsorship. Now that we have more than 1 years data in the database it is possible.

This request has probably come about due to the increased number of paddle ups which has only been a feature of canoe slalom for a couple of years. It should be possible for me to change the system to show the event position plus a 'real' position if that helps paddlers secure sponsorhip. I can calculate this when loading the results.

I'll discuss it with Nick as I always do. I'll probably leave it until after the ACM as if portable points are agreed then the whole system changes and it would be a different ball game plus there will be a whole raft of work to complete to cater for portable points!

Feedback is always welcome, I can't promise you will get what you want or in what timescales as I'm a volunteer too but I'd rather know about requirements so I can try and please everyone (I'm ever the optimist!).

So if you have some idea which might be of interest to the wider slalom paddling community please let me know.

I had for instance thought of adding some graphs to the paddler records but I'm not sure what sort of data paddlers would want displayed in a graph to give an instant visual confirmation of their performance.

Duncan

[boatmum]

Can I just reiterate my appreciation for all the volunteer time and work carried out to bring us such a great facility on the canoeslalom website.

Not totally sold on a rolling ranking system - it was tried for Prem about 2 years ago but Im not sure it brought much to the table and seemed like a lot of effort for a small return.

Personally I think the athletes have as much as they need data wise but the positions in individual races on their individual records appear to be valuable - certainly to the third parties we talk to re sponsorship. However given the way Baldockbabe describes how the results are compiled I can see this would be really difficult

Probably not the best place to say this but I really dont "get" paddle ups and certainly dont get portable points just feels like an unnecessary complication to what is already quite a complicated system. What I have noticed is a sharp decline in available gate judges at div1 / prem events because where as before paddlers would enter judges runs to get tougher course experience they now paddle up. I know that it probably generates more income through the entry fees but it can make judging for other volunteers a much longer affair.

I digress - sorry

Whatever is decided re the results data I think what would be helpful is a heads up it is going to happen before it is actioned. Sounds cheeky I know but if you've explained to sponsors one system re the results/rankings then they access the site and see something different they can loose confidence - been there in the past actually over the rolling rankings

Again many thanks for this great facility

[PeterC]

Firstly thanks must go to Duncan and Nick for the work done in improving information for paddlers, and thus perhaps sponsors.

The format of the British Open has been the same for the last three years. There is a Prem race on the Saturday with points accrued from the best of the two runs. This allows paddlers who are only interested in Prem points to only need to be in London for the one day. In effect it also levels the playing field a bit for paddlers with little or no prior experience on LV going into the Open race on the Sunday. Many do value the opportunity to have four timed and judged runs on LV particularly in view of the increased entry fees.

There was obviously a bigger international presence this year making things more obvious. The results however are in the same format as previous years. The format as noted is different to the McConkey. Unfortunately many who wanted to paddle up into the Open were disappointed this year.

With regard to paddle up this is clearly not of value to those already in Prem but has been beneficial for some struggling to cross the division boundaries.

Lastly I would like to say my personal thank you for to all the volunteers who contributed to its success.