One Fall?

[So_I_Ski]

Further to the topic of possible improvements to tournaments, has anyone ever considered a "one fall" tournament? I have always thought that the best skiers should prevail whenever possible simply because it is the most fair approach. To that end, in a somewhat similar sport in terms of progressively harder attempts at a barrier, in both high jumping and pole vaulting just to name two that come to mind, the ahtletes are given multiple attempts before being eliminated. In those events the cream almost always rises to the top. Someone correctly thought that some inovation was required in waterskiing when head to head was introduced. Perhaps it is time for a "one fall" tournament. It would only add a couple of minutes at most to each skier's overall time on the water and if the better skier had a brain fart at an earlier pass or missed his gate, he would still have a chance to finish where his skill level warranted. (Intentional typo in there for my friend Ed to find.) LOL.

[ozski]

One fall or one fail? :)

[Horton]

Holy Crap it would make events last forever. I like out of the box thinking but I have to give a big thumbs down on this. Next idea please.

 

It would only add a couple of minutes at most to each skier's overall time on the water

FALSE!

[Edbrazil]

An innovative idea. Agree with Horton, though. Vs. head-to-head: we ran an experimental

event back on July 4, 1976. Tour adopted the format for the final rounds.

[So_I_Ski]

Good question - I guess I was thinking one fail, the skier would not necessarily have to fall if that's what you thought I meant. And Horton, how much extra time do you think it would take to go back and pick up the skier and proceed to the end of the course for another pass? It seems to me that when one of us falls, the driver has us back at the other end in two minutes tops. Am I that far off?? Or is two minutes too long?? Now you've got me thinking I'll have to time it when I'm back on the water in the spring. Maybe I'm way out in my guesstimate.

[Deep11]

Think I floated this idea a while back - to manage the "it will take forever" concerns and the "comps are boring" my suggestion was that in addition competitors would start at whatever the "cut" was for the finals. So in most pro comps now they would start at 10.75! Hell they could have two falls - would be great fun to watch :)

[Gloersen]

@solski – the T&B format (13.03) provides one “fall” (fail) per skier per tournament and is a reasonable innovation in effect that provides what you suggest.

 

Granted, T&B is “C/F” only and not mandatory for a skier, they may choose to ski all sanctioned rds singularly, (an additional 3 minutes is generally planned/skier/segment when selecting the T&B option).

 

However experience indicates it is most effective/efficient running these T&B formats when each skier opts to utilize it; essentially providing a mulligan to each skier’s final round; a 2nd rd with a shot at redemption (3rd rd).

 

More innovative ideas are always welcome.

 

[RazorRoss3]

If you are doing a one round tournament I like the idea that the winner is whoever came to play that day and can put it on the water. A mulligan is likely to increase the likelihood of the results matching the seeding while reducing the odds of an upset. So for one round tournaments I'd be inclined to leave that part alone. Once you have a multi round event it doesn't matter as much since in 3 rounds I would expect the results to match the seeding.

[chris55]

In Switzerland we have the "relax" format on cetain local tournament. If you fail and you want to go back to the slalom, then you can ask for the relax format and go back again. But you will not have any offical score for that matter. Maybe it is the same as T&B ?. I thinkit is ok and great for beginners and intermediate but for big tournament with 2 or 3 rounds, if you miss one, you have the 2nd or the 3rd to make it right and it is a part of the slalom tournament, it is also a mind game and that is why tourament PB and training PB could be far apart or not. Meaning we have to work on our focus and mind + technics. Noboby says that it is a easy sport .....but we love it don't we ?

[Jody_Seal]

We already have a missed gate rule for opening pass in Class C competition. We also (again for Class-C) have a rule for juniors to rope shorten and score at slower speeds then max.

 

Personally I would like the availability to ski at speeds that are below max other then 3 K increment or 2 MPH. With today's speed control why not allow skiers the availability with penalty to pick their speed they want. Currently and this time of year and in the spring I like to ski at 54 K or 33.9 MPH. 52K/32mph is just to slow. Also many of us older skiers that are looking at mandate slow down in the next number of years might not want to ski at 52 or 49 K (32/30mph) but would feel more comfortable and competitive skiing a bit faster speed. I am sure a scoring program could be easily modified to accept and adjust buoy count to apply to this concept.

 

[aupatking]

For Novice, or skiers with avg buoy counts of less than X (66 or less?), there should always be a second pass. Always. I'm actually a proponent of setting a number of passes (4?) for any skier who has paid their entry fee into a tournament, but cannot run a full pass at their division speed.

By coming to, and paying for the tournament, they have done their part. Reward them.

As for the top pros, those guys get plenty passes. Just ask them. Do they want to run 8 passes, every round in a 3 round tournament? I'm sure they'd say yes, but only if it meant they'd just run 43 off.

[A_B]

To build on the idea, if you went to a 3 round "fail" tournament, you could burn all 3 of your fails in one round, so I would think it would speed up the overall process of a 3 rounder. I could see that you could miss your in your first set, then burn a fail and re-run the pass again and the higher score would count. You would then have one set left, or could even burn both fails and have 3 whacks at your top score.

 

I know, it is not how the current rules are, but there is no legislation in congress that says it can't change....

 

 

[MISkier]

If your C tournament is also sanctioned as Grassroots, you can choose to ski class F. You will get your 4 passes. Any score you achieve will go to your ranking, but will be capped to not exceed the COA for level 5 in your age division.

[dbutcher]

@Jody_Seal I think there is discussion of one of your ideas ongoing right now in the Rules committee - i.e. potential rules changes so that older skiers are not forced to slow down if they don't want to.

[lpskier]

@solski Say it's an extra two minutes a skier, and it's a three round tournament with 30 skiers. That's an extra hour per round. That stretches a nine hour tournament (best case) to ten if you get one mulligan per tournament. Three extra hours if it's a mulligan every round. That assumes there are no yard sales where the skier needs to get on the platform, find the soap, travel to the end of the course, wait for the water to settle, etc. I bet the average would look more like five minutes per skier.

 

You could say that if you take a mulligan, you have to forfeit the next round. That would make up the time, probably, but then you run into the annoying problem of skiers leaving before the tournament is over, condensing the late day work (judging, dock starting, scoring, picking up, etc.) making more work for some.

 

You could do it with 30 skiers, two rounds, two mulligans, and maybe get it done in the same time as a three round tournament under the current rules and format, but are two rounds with mulligans better than three without? If polled, my guess is that at most favorable to your idea half would like the mulligans and half would like the third round. Disclosure: I don't like the turn and burn format either for the reasons identified above. Then again, I like vanilla, and there's lots of folks that prefer chocolate.

 

[Ralph Lee]

What about a time limit. Each skier gets 7 minutes, can choose their wait time and can crash more then once in the set and still win. Big clock on the shoreline and the announce counts down from 10. I'm only half serious but I think that would be entertaining!!

 

Boat driver proceeds to all pickups exactly the same

[So_I_Ski]

To lpskier and for that matter all of the rest of the insightful ballers, since I am not a actually a tournament skier myself, although I was aware that there were three round tournaments, I did not think they were frequently held. So your analysis appears very sound and you have insightfully pointed out the flaws to my suggestion as in two minutes possibly turning into five and more. So perhaps Horton's initial comment of "next idea please" was appropriate. I do kinda like Ralph's suggestion though as I have wondered if some skiers took a lot longer than others before getting pulled up after each pass. I know that among the half dozen guys that I ski with regularly there is quite a discrepancy so perhaps a big countdown clock in the boat would not only allow a skier to have that fall but shorten the entire tournament? All in all my initial thought was that it never seemed right to me that in a sport where the athlete can travel a great distance to compete, and yet with one small mistep be out of the competition in minutes, particularly if that skier is clearly superior to his peers. So now I'm thinking as per Ralph, how about each skier gets X amount of time to complete the first three passes and it's reasonable but tighter than the average time taken now and as he suggests, if they fall once they can even instruct the driver to spin them if they prefer to make sure they get to complete those three passes.

After that the clock shuts off and no more falls or mistakes are allowed. And probably, more often than not, they would not actually fall but just get out of shape and give up the pass so very little extra time would be taken. Lots of sports have instituted time clocks and they have all helped improve the sport so the idea in itself is not flawed.

[LeonL]

@dbutcher "rules changes so that older skiers don't have to slow down if they don't want to"? That's already in the rules, unless there is something different that you're referring to. Currently your score is the same as if you were skiing at the slower speed. I'd like it be that you can ski one speed increment above your division max speed and get the equivalent score for that speed. This is kinda thread stealing, but it's in response to the @dbutcher post.

[dbutcher]

@LeonL I'm obviously not on the Rules committee, but I think there's more being discussed-what you'd like to see included. What I would prefer is that if a skier wants to stay at 34mph, he/she can stay in the oldest 34mph age division for the rest of his/her life. I'm opposed to making a skier speed back up to remain competitive.

[LeonL]

I'm not sure I know what you mean by "speed back up". Do you mean the people already skiing at, say 32, having to speed up if there were to be a rules change?

[dbutcher]

Yes. They wouldn't have to speed back up, but they would to remain competitive if M7 34mph skiers scored at 34. This is better discussed in the other thread you just started.

[wtrskior]

The first few tournaments I went to had this rule in place but it was combined with a guaranteed 4 pass rule and the division was not included with the record capale divisions. Start at any speed and line length and you get 1 fall. If you fall on your 4th pass you're done.

 

It's probably one of the best ways to get new skiers out to try tournaments. IMO

 

 

 

 

[ALPJr]

@soIski @Edbrazil and @Horton I like the idea of having formats that encourage tournament participation by enthusiasts who would otherwise not be inclined to enter a tourney. There used to be an AWSA 4 round novice slalom in Marlboro MA. 2 rounds back to back, so basically you got two mulligans. 1st round, miss or fall then ski 2nd round. Went through 30 to 40 skiers in about 7 to 8 hours.

[wtrskior]

@ALPJr sounds a bit like a turn and burn. They are great formats too. People don't want to come put to tournaments and ski 2 passes, its just not productive. Keep the state, regional and nationals a traditional format but if your area is not having much participation or tournaments in general need to get people to come out. They won't come out if they can't ski! They will stay home and get their 2 sets in with 16 passes!