Middle lanes are faster, and for some reason swimmer with the fastest record gets the middle in most events, which always seemed weird to me -- it's a positive feedback system. Seems like you should give the advantage to the people who are behind, not ahead... but that's common in sports and in modern society for some reason.
Giving advantages to the better participants is a practice common across a variety of racing sports. The idea being that, if you could earn an advantage by doing worse, then in a race where you know at a certain point that you can't medal anyway, it would be optimal to just intentionally slow down to try to come in last and secure an advantage in the next race.
I've heard this said before, and I understand the reasoning, but I don't think it's good enough. We should be aiming for equality at the start of a race, not giving the better people a head start. If qualifying races are broken in the way, then just randomize the starting order. Literally do a random draw as people are walking/driving up to the start. It would make the events far more interesting as well.
As a counterpoint, think about the balancing act of trying to place as well as you can in the semifinals while not over-exhausting yourself to the point where you've got no energy left for the final.
I think this dynamic is way more interesting than what you'd get if semifinal rankings had no impact ; that latter scenario would basically result in a Dutch auction on effort, and likely suppress performance on the qualifying races.
Let’s consider auto sport. For most races, there are fixed starting positions that are determined by qualifying. Qualification is generally done by racing around the track as fast as you can without any other racer on the track or blocking you. The faster you qualify, the better your starting position. The better your starting position, the more advantage you have in the main race. If you are trying to figure out who the better racer is, it’s not a bad system. Everyone is incentivized to do as well as they can at each step.
But, I think there is another motivation to consider. I don’t think the point is necessarily to find the best racer (or swimmer in your case). Instead, I think the point may be to make it so that the best swimmers can swim their best race. The goal isn’t just to see who can win, but to see if the winners can beat a larger record. You want the best racers to have the best chance at performing their best. When the best swimmers are in the middle lanes, they have the best conditions for breaking other records.
It’s not the most fair system. Track is probably a little better, but even then, the lane you are in has certain advantages and disadvantages.
You could make it based on past performance at a given level. So your position in a qualifying race depends on your placement in last year's qualifying race. Your position at the final Olympic event depends on your placement at the same event in the last Olympics.
If it's your first time at a given event, I guess keep whatever we do now or make it random. The reason for this system would be to make surprise wins from less-known people more likely, which I'd think would be desirable.
It’s not strange at all. People want to see records broken. Levelling the playing field works against that goal.
Sports is an aspirational medium of entertainment. People want to see excellence. They want to see dynasties. Too much fairness and balance leads to loss of interest.
Look at the NBA. We’re in a period of unprecedented parity and balance. It seems like every year brings a different championship team. Ratings are way down and loads of people are complaining about the CBA which was written with the goal of bringing more parity to the league, a goal it’s quite obviously achieving!
On the other hand the NFL’s hard salary cap and consequent parity is what has made it the most popular US professional sporting league. People in the US don’t want to see big markets buy their way to championships.
as an adult the NFL is the most watchable professional sport for me, despite my city having no NFL team. every year I can just choose a playoff bound team to root for based on their style or storyline. And each game is meaningful whereas the other professional sports have regular seasons that just drag on and on. also love the one and done knockout playoff format.
I always thought that Americans just had the NFL on in the background or something and used it as an excuse to be social. But I'm realising I'm likely wrong about that reading comments like this.
I'm guessing you're just a vast amount more accepting of a high ad to content ratio than other cultures?
American football rules have the clock stop every time play stops, unlike association football which runs the clock continuously. This means that for 11 minutes of gameplay there is a lot of other stuff going on with a lot of commentary and replays as the players substitute on and off the field and move to get in position for the next snap.
So that means it's not 100 commercials per 11 minutes of content since much of the content happens while the clock is stopped.
I know that's the narrative about the NBA lately but it's just that - narrative.
It's far from proven that the short-lived "parity" that has emerged in the aftermath of the KD Warriors dynasty is the cause of down ratings.
I do personally dislike it though and find the parity via CBA to be artificial. It just causes continuity on a contender to be untenable.
And continuity is what makes for good basketball, hence why dynasties are so fun to watch. It's not just that they win, a lot. It's that they have a consistent style of play with a consistent cast of players (stars and role players) that fans get to know over the course of those dynastic years.
Not always. Some of the most prestigious horse races in the UK, US, and Australia ar handicap races. The horse that is most successful carries the most weight. The handicapper attempts to create a dead heat.
IIRC Ecclestone suggested getting rid of qualifiers and just putting the F1 cars n the inverse order of their last race. This idea was in order to get more overtakes (the best parts of F1 races). I think it would be great.
There was a period in World Rally Championship history when the top drivers would manipulate the starting order for the following day's stages by intentionally slowing down before the end of the stage. It was bizarre to watch teams intentionally give up 10+ second margins when stage wins can come down to half-second gaps.
In the BTCC, there was a similar situation for a while: in one of the races, the best-perfoming half of the pack would start at the back of the grid, and the worst-performing half at the front of the grid - but in-order within the two groups. However, since 2006 there has been some randomness added to the grid positioning, which makes attempting to manipulate it a risky business.
Just thinking if it's done F1 style it is fair. It's fresh at each competition.
If it's based on past times that creates possibly a feedback loop but depends on details. E.g. can a swimmer use a non competition record towards their qualification.
Reminds me of the final boss in Smash Bros. If you purposefully let him whip you at first, the adaptive play would nerf him enough to let you easily finish him.
Track & Field races stagger the starting positions, to compensate for the outer lanes of the track being longer. American football has the teams switch goals every quarter, to even out the advantages of having the wind at your team's back.
Your examples are about making circumstances equivalent, thus canceling out any advantage. There's no way to e.g. switch lanes in swimming so we're bound to have some contestants advantaged.
In cases where some contestants have to be advantaged, the conventional solution in sports is to advantage the ones who performed better according to some metric.
I think it's unfair to reward those who were lucky or already advantaged somehow, but my wife who has a background in track and field thinks anything else would be unfair.
> ... no way to e.g. switch lanes in swimming so ...
Why couldn't you shorten the pool, from a swimmer's PoV, by putting (say) a very shallow plywood box against the wall of the pool at one end of each "non-center" lane? Yes, you might need to do some math & stats to figure out just how shallow a box. Or, you could use a feedback loop - boxes start very shallow, leading swimmers get to pick a lane, boxes adjusted, repeat.
I believe the main reasoning why this is fair is that this advantage is earned.
Would it be fairer to use randomly assigned lane? Then you get almost equal competitors in advantageous and disadvantageous lanes?
Isn't the top result in a year also used for qualification purposes (and thus lane assignment) for top-level competitions? Basically, you earn a spot in the best lane throughout the calendar year.
When I hear of an advantage being earned, I imagine it would go to the one who has put in the most effort, or been most inventive. Here, it goes to the one with the best metric. Metrics are a proxy for effort/inventiveness, but far from perfect. (As any software developer in a large organisation can attest.)
It also focuses the race around the center of the pool which works from a visual standpoint. Favorites in the middle, dark horses surrounding at the edge
In US sports it is very common in the tournament for a single season, or in a single event to reward better performance earlier in that same season or same tournament. I like this because it incentivizes doing well early in a season.
On the other hand, the NFL and NBA give better draft odds for to teams who did badly in the previous season. I also like this because it allows teams who don't have the (comparatively) massive resources of a team based in a large market to compete. This is NEGATIVE feedback, and of course fans of teams in large markets don't like it. Even so, negative feedback is the core of making a stable system.
To summarize, in a single season or in a single tournament, doing well is rewarded. Across seasons, some sports have mechanisms to help poor teams become better.
Is it fair if we get the objectively fastest swimmers to go slower so competition is closer?
Note that the advantaged swimmers in middle lanes are really objectively faster: they earn their spot through year long competitions and in-event qualifications. Sure, they will be an odd case or two.
Spectators don’t seem to mind it in rally race car driving, downhill skiing, bobsledding, and other timed events where multiple competitors cannot share the track.
Spectators also don’t seem to mind for diving, gymnastics, figure skating, equestrian and other events which are points defined and competitors are also performing sequentially.
Your first list of sports are all single participant because of safety. Every one of those has a significant risk of injury or death that is unavoidable for the sport and nobody wants to die because the competitor next to you makes a mistake. Spectators would absolutely pay to watch it, however (see MMA, boxing, etc).
The second list are not judged by racing against the clock and therefore pointless to compete simultaneously.
> Your first list of sports are all single participant because of safety.
That’s irrelevant in terms of spectators. Which was the GPs point.
If the spectators can watch solo runs in X then they can watch it in Y.
> The second list are not judged by racing against the clock
I know, I said that already.
> and therefore pointless to compete simultaneously.
There are plenty of point-based competitions which are still competed simultaneously. Like Paralympic races. Darts. Shooting. Dancing competitions. I could list plenty more.
You’re conflating requirements with tradition.
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The real crux of the matter isn’t any arbitrarily defined condition. It’s just what people are conditioned to expect.
Certain sports and even specific competitions within certain sports are structured a certain why because that’s how the organisers have decided. Yeah ticket sales will always be a factor in the decision making, but that doesn’t mean that one format is inherently incompatible with spectators than another format.
The real reason I think swimming is unlikely to ever be swam solo is for the same reasons Paralympic swimming races combine people with different disabilities: there just isn’t enough time in the calendar to fit every swimming event in if everyone swam solo. There are a multitude of different strokes and distances that get competed. It’s not like mountain biking where there’s only one way down the hill.
It's not just a tradition or conditioning out of nothing: it was also feasibility to do so. Eg. you don't get that gymnastics podium seven times over, you only get one. Whereas for bowling and darts, adding one extra spot is not that much extra space. You also completely ignored one reason GP brought up: safety (in rally driving). To save on time, they still usually start with a few minutes delay on the same track.
Where it is feasible to compare side-by-side, we do (swimming, running but not eg. discus throw or high jump), and we award medals on direct result. Where it isn't, we use other independently tracked scores (time, points...).
Rally driving is less to do with safety and more to do with the complexity of adding more cars. There are also plenty of motor racing sports where multiple vehicle are on the track at any one time. But those courses are wider. Why aren’t Rally tracks wider? Well there’s no reason they couldn’t be, but the sport was never intended to operate that way. Whereas other motor sports was intended to be head to head.
But that aside, you’re building a strawman argument here (eg I was never arguing against safety elements) doing so actually agreeing with the point I was making:
Spectators are not the only, or even in many cases, primary, reason that events are structured the way they are.
I agree there are a plethora of other reasons and made that point myself. Safety being just one of them. Feasibility being another. But a lot of the time these problems can be solved by one means or another if event organisers truly wanted ways to run their event differently.
All of those sports are far more niche than sports where the competitors compete directly against each other.
I can give you an example from my own sport: triathlon. It has two broad categories: short and long course. Short course is generally draft legal, and was developed specifically to get into the Olympics. Plenty of people can name the Brownlee brothers, Alex Yee (place Olympic athlete of your own home nation here). Most of my own damn triathlon club have no idea who Lucy Charles-Barclay is (the UK’s best long course triathlete and Ironman and 70.3 world champion)!
> They might not be your field of expertise but calling (for example) Rally as “niche” is insanely off the mark.
I say this as someone who’s uncle was a rally driver: it’s niche.
> Except you didn’t give an example that had anything to do with our conversation.
Half correct: long course is, in theory, a race between people. In practice, it’s a bunch of time trials that sometimes sees a pass, but there’s not much interaction by the time you get to the run.
If we wanted to talk within a sport: cycling has time trialling and road racing. I can tell you the difference in spectator numbers is stark. Like, time trialling has 0 spectators and road racing gets plenty. I love it but it’s really not that interesting to watch compared to road racing.
> I say this as someone who’s uncle was a rally driver: it’s niche.
Funny enough, mine too. That’s a hell of a coincidence for something that’s “niche” ;)
I don’t think you know half as much about this motorsport than you think you do. That or you have a really distorted opinion of what constitutes as “niche”
It’s multimillion dollar industry for starters.
Car manufacturers specifically make models for professional rally circuits.
There’s video games sponsorships and all sorts.
We aren’t talking about Redbull Soapbox racing here. It’s up there with other popular forms of motorsports like NASCAR.
Granted Rally isn’t as big as F1. But F1s success doesn’t automatically make another sport niche either.
Anything that is a multi-million dollar industry is clearly well beyond the realm of “niche”.
Skiing is another massive industry. It’s definitely well beyond what any normal person would define as “niche”.
You have more of an argument with bobsled but it still gets its spectators come the Winter Olympics. So even if it were niche, it’s still evidence to my point regarding spectators of timed events.
> If we wanted to talk within a sport: cycling has time trialling and road racing. I can tell you the difference in spectator numbers is stark. Like, time trialling has 0 spectators and road racing gets plenty. I love it but it’s really not that interesting to watch compared to road racing
I don’t know enough about cycling to comment on TT vs road racing but plenty of other sports have a mixture of TT and head to head racing and still see high numbers of spectators for the TTs. So I suspect there’s other variables at play in cycling to explain the lower turnout. Possibly because spectators are low to begin with and TT are such early stages that people would prefer to see the final stages instead, which are not TTs?
Literally nothing you said stops it being niche. I love triathlon but my sport is niche. I love time trialling, bike manufacturers produce bikes worth up to £20,000 and amateur participants spend hundreds of pounds in a wind tunnel to eke out a few seconds to win their regional championship. It's still incredibly fucking niche.
> It’s multimillion dollar industry for starters.
Most niche hobbies are
> Car manufacturers specifically make models for professional rally circuits.
See above, most niche hobbies have this.
> There’s video games sponsorships and all sorts.
Yeah... so?
> It’s up there with other popular forms of motorsports like NASCAR.
NASCAR is a single country and still outstrips all of rally viewership globally.
> Anything that is a multi-million dollar industry is clearly well beyond the realm of “niche”.
Nope, it's still niche.
> Skiing is another massive industry. It’s definitely well beyond what any normal person would define as “niche”.
Almost nobody takes part in skiing, it's niche.
> it still gets its spectators come the Winter Olympics.
So does track & field but most of those sports are incredibly niche.
> Possibly because spectators are low to begin with and TT are such early stages that people would prefer to see the final stages instead, which are not TTs?
TdF gets high numbers for the TT because it affects the grand tour but TTs on their own get far fewer spectators. The Tour of Britain will have loads of people along the route cheering it. When our region hosted the National 10 Mile TT championship, the only spectators were the families of the competitors and those of us marshalling it.
To be clear: not all TT format sports are niche, I just point out that, in general, head-to-head races get far more viewership than time-trial format sports. In fact, the examples you gave pretty much proved that point. F1 annihilates WRC for viewership. As does NASCAR (even from the UK I know of its cultural impact!)
For some reason, this part of my message didn't get sent
> Almost nobody takes part in skiing, it's niche.
You are aware that there are hundreds of ski resorts? Particularly in Europe. It's a massive pastime in the mountains around here.
In fact it's actually a rather mainstream hobby.
> So does track & field but most of those sports are incredibly niche.
It's on TV multiple times a year in the UK. And I'm talking about the main terrestrial TV channels (of which we only have 5). Not satellite nor cable.
Track and Field athletes are big name celebrities here too. Which does not happen with niche sports.
And that literally every school from infants to secondary school teaches T&F and even devotes an entire day each year for track and field events. They call it "Sports Day".
In fact almost all UK schools, even small village primary schools/kindergartens, also have facilities for T&F.
It's not niche.
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If you want to talk about niche sports, then talk about handball, polo, croquet, shuffleboard, bar billiards, etc. Not stuff that is on TV regularly and taught at every school.
This might be a cultural thing and you just don't see much of these sports where you are. But you could at least research these sports before claiming they're niche.
WRC isn’t niche. Period. It might not be as big as F1 but that doesn’t make it niche. And your arguments about how it’s “niche” only demonstrate that you don’t know what a niche sport is.
I partake in plenty of niche sports. And compared to them, WRC is massive. Some might even say it’s mainstream in comparison to some of the sports I’ve competed in.
Anyway, to the point at hand:
Speedway racing is niche in comparison and that’s head to head. Thus by your logical fallacy, TT should be more popular than head to head. Clearly that’s not a correct deduction of the statistics though.
Ping n Ford races are head to head and they have extremely small view figures.
In fact I could list dozens of obscure sports that are head to head and get smaller viewing figures than other TT events.
All your arguments prove is that some sports are more popular than some other sports for a variety of reasons which are far too broad to distil down to a single variable.
And this is the point I’ve repeatedly made. To argue that one format exist because of one singular reason is overly simplistic to the point of being stupid.
You'd make that trade off? Do you swim competively or how many events do you watch per year?
I mean I'd make the tradeoff that there be no forward passes in the NFL but I'm not a follower of that sport so I'd likely not put that opinion out there because frankly I don't care.
If slower qualifiers got better position, then what you'd get would be qualifiers deliberately trying to sandbag themselves for that. Such an incentive is never a good look for sports.
It is most likely because we are bad at pattern matching. By default we reward anything we perceive as positive, regardless of who we think is causing it or what the long-term consequences might be.
It takes some education to recognize the long-term effects of rewarding the wrong things, and then it takes even more education to not worry about the very long-term effects at all.
Does this effect taper off as you get further away from the edges of the pool? Wondering if you could eliminate the unfairness by just leaving a few lanes empty on each edge of the pool.
The original comment is likely accurate regarding the benefit to ditectly trailing swimmers, but probably not trailing swimmers where shed vortices are stable in adjacent lanes where shed vortices interact chaotically.
Alright, so we're agreed: the only solution is to build every swim-racing pool of individual lanes with solid walls between each!8-)) All lanes are then equivalent.
