Number of runs and best tricks
Comments about this discussion:
Started
This has been brought up by a few riders who feel like they only have so many tricks prepared for competition.
Should the number of runs be decreased?
Having too many runs will just give us the same tricks all over. So I think it would be beneficial to have the number of runs in prelims set to 2. I never use 3 for any competition.
And going further, I would also set the number of runs for finals to 2. Three runs take forever to just see the same tricks and I don't think that many runs are needed when riders are going for optimization of their one planned run anyways. Flatland might be a good example here with only one run in prelims (and that's working fine)
This would shorten competition times (which was another concern brought up).
And if we really wanted to use the time we gained, we could go for more best tricks, which usually do vary more. When riders land their planned trick they are often going for a different more difficult one. So instead of '3 tries, best counts' go '5 tries, best 2 count' maybe.
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I agree that 2 Timed Runs are plenty for Prelims - however I don't see it as a problem to have the opportunity to have 3, but we can set it to 2.
In Finals though, I think it is good to have 3 TR's. My main point for keeping 3 TR's in Finals is because unfortunately at the past 2 Unicons riders could barely train on the course prior to the event; and the situation will be quite similar at U21 too. In Korea we still had Slopestyle Street and Street, so the course was available for a couple of days, but at U20 we finished the course the (very late) night before the comp, then had Prelims, and the only time riders could practice on the course was after Prelims and the morning before Finals, which isn't much. So at least I would keep it as an option to have 3 TR's in Finals too, and we could add the possibility to have just 2 at the discretion of the Event Director / Chief Judge.
I checked my time notes from U20. For every category (Jr. Expert Male - 5 riders, Expert Female - 4 riders, Expert Male - 8 riders), 1 round of TR's was usually slightly shorter than the round for Best Tricks.
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I see, good point. But then we should focus on making it a requirement to have the street course available for training before competition instead of living with the downsides of it that we already have and that would only be worsened if there are less runs. Competitionwise I think it would be an improvement to have less runs and more best trick tries, for the riders and audience.
What do you think of making it an option to have 5 best trick tries with the best 2 being counted?
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We have tried this concept at Summer EUC having 2 runs (best 1 counts) for prelims and 2 runs ( best 1 counts) + 5 best trick attempts (best 2 count) for finals.
Riders had about an hour to ride the course before the event started and appeared to be fine with that little training and then having less runs. (although ideally we need to find a way to always give riders a chance to actually train on the course in the future)
The feedback I got from riders and audience was good. @Mark did you get any feedback also?
The feedback I got:
People liked that finals were less repetitive with less runs and liked the higher amount of big trick attempts. Finals felt tighter, I assume this was because people were seeing more new and different stuff instead of riders trying to perfect their run for a third time.
Riders liked the higher impact of the best trick section.
How we judged finals in detail:
2 runs, best 1 counting, 50 % of the final score
5 best trick attempts, best 2 counting, 20% each, so 40% + 10% variety score (judged for the best tricks only, more on this later), best trick score overall 50%
By deviding the score percentages 50/50 for run and best trick we tried to give the higher amount of scored best trick attempts a higher impact as well (up from 70/30).
50/50 also nicely works in terms of fairness between riders who either have a flowy street style suitable for runs or having a big trick kinda style suitable for the best trick section. This seemed fair for the possible different street styles there are and riders who can do both well would have the advantage.
Runs pretty much were judged the same as always.
Best trick judging:
We judged best trick as usual on difficulty and style and in addition wrote down the tricks the rider did in their 5 attempts.
If a rider did the exact same trick twice (so if they wanted to get a higher style score for a trick for example) we killed the lower score and only kept the higher one valid. This is so riders don't only practice one trick and show it multiple times leading to one trick counting twice into the final score.
We also recommended to go for very different tricks like grinds, flips, coasts, rolls on very different obstacles. To reward that and again to prevent riders doing only one trick or very similar variations of a trick multiple times we used a variety score for the best trick section like this:
After a rider's 5 attempts we looked at the two highest scoring attempts and their respective tricks done. A variety score from 0-10 was then given for those two tricks based on the similarity of the trick and the similarity of the obstacle used.
Things I would still change:
I think I would like to try reducing the number of prelim runs to only one.
We needed 5 hours for around 35 riders to do their 2 prelim runs with only doing minimal breaks in between runs and categories.
This would lead to easier, more consistent prelim runs like we see in Flatland but it would give us time to lengthen finals by letting more people advance and then show more difficult runs and tricks there. This could also solve the issue of repetiviveness by reducing the number of total runs done by each rider and inducing a difference between the goals of the prelim run (doing a solid, consistent one) and the final runs (risking more, going for bigger tricks because of the two attempts).
This topic is not necessarily meant to propose to change street rules to this ruleset right now, but it does have advantages that I liked and that I will try out again at a future competition. This discussion is meant more to think about this and try to find a compromise to make street more enjoyable for riders and audience.
What do you people think?
Comment
I did like the format in the finals too, I must admit I was sceptical at first about decreasing the number of Timed Runs, but I think it worked great. Definitely helped with event flow, and having more Best Trick attempts was definitely good too for the audience, and I believe for the riders too.
I unfortunately did not talk to the riders personally if they liked this set of Timed Runs and Best Tricks, but I think they were at least OK with it (otherwise they would have said it :) )
About decreasing the number of Timed Runs to 1 in Prelims: I agree that at the moment Street Prelims take forever, and at EUC we didn't even have that many competitors. At Unicon it took an entire day basically. My view on this is similar to what it is with decreasing the number of Timed Runs in Finals: IF the riders get enough time to practice and get familiar with the course, then I think it is fine to go with only one run. But I don't think we can expect riders to give a good performance on a course they don't know with only 1 run. So this has to go hand-in-hand with strictly saying that practice time must be given to the riders.
About the scoring between Timed Runs and Best Trick: I am unsure about going with 50-50. I agree that if we choose to go with best of 2 TR and 2 best of 5 BT instead of best of 3 TR and best of 3 BT, then we clearly emphasized Best Trick a bit more than it is currently, and that should be represented in the scoring too. However I still think that a 1 minute run should weigh more than 2 single tricks with multiple tries. I would probably suggest 65-35 or 60-40. I would love to hear some feedback from riders though.
I like that you added variety for the best trick, and I agree that the same trick landed twice shouldn't get scored two times. It has to be something different, at least a different obstacle.