Comments about the Ranking (Proposal #1) after a year of testing

By Pietro Fantoni At the end we have an International Ranking for the Snipe Class: Snipe Super Series - Proposal #1 - Final First of all, thanks to Daniela Semec Rochelli for the patient work of loading data. The Ranking for this year was experimental, because it was necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each system. The stated goals of the Ranking are: to promote the Snipe Class to encourage participation at regattas in every SCIRA country and continent to compare technical skills of both skippers and crews to provide a simple and attractive tool of communication to promote the popular regattas to sailors, the general public and the media to promote SCIRA membership Here's a summary of the regulations: ...

Comments about the Ranking (Proposal #1) after a year of testing Image

By Pietro Fantoni

At the end we have an International Ranking for the Snipe Class: Snipe Super Series – Proposal #1 – Final

First of all, thanks to Daniela Semec Rochelli for the patient work of loading data.

The Ranking for this year was experimental, because it was necessary to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each system.

The stated goals of the Ranking are:

  • to promote the Snipe Class
  • to encourage participation at regattas in every SCIRA country and continent
  • to compare technical skills of both skippers and crews
  • to provide a simple and attractive tool of communication
  • to promote the popular regattas to sailors, the general public and the media
  • to promote SCIRA membership

Here’s a summary of the regulations:

 

– Validity: The SSS Ranking is a continuous classification that is updated each week. It is not reset at the start of each year. Previous regattas will be replaced by current ones of the same type (i.e. last year’s National Championship results will be replaced by this year’s; last year World Championship will be replaced by the Open Europeans or WH&O). Regattas that took place more than 12 months ago will be dropped from the ranking.

– The SSS Ranking produces one Ranking, with no distinction between skippers and crews. On December 31 the best Snipe Sailor will be named Snipe Super Series Champion.

All skippers and crews shall be SCIRA members and comply with SCIRA rules and regulations.

The Scoring system of the Proposal #1

This system is similar to the ATP ranking in tennis or to the Star Sailors League (which was a great starting point).
There are 6 regatta categories. The table below indicates the number of SSS points allocated to the winner of each competition category (From 10 to 4000).

SSS Points by Regatta Category:

 

Cat. 1

4000

– World Championship (odd years);

– European Championship and

– Western Hemisphere & Orient (even

years)

Even if a skipper or a crew

attends 2 regattas,

only one of these regattas

will be included in the SSS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 6 highest valid totals

Cat. 2

2000

– Pan American Games,

– “SSS 2000 regattas”,

– World Championships limited by gender or age (i.e. Master Worlds, Junior Worlds, Women’s Championship) regardless of fleet size,

– plus all regattas with 40 boats or more

Classified regattas regardless of fleet size, plus all regattas with 40 boats or more

Cat. 3

750

– All National Championships with less than 40 boats

If a National Championship has 40 boats or more it will be scored as a cat. 2)

Cat. 4

250

– Regattas with 30-39 boats

 

Cat. 5

100

– Regattas with 10-29 boats

 

All valid totals

Cat. 6

10

– Regattas with 3-9 boats

 

Scores are allocated according to a hyperbola (see below):

grafico

Proposal #1 includes local regattas, obviously with lower scores, while international regattas receive high scores (especially for the top positions). It ensures that the best and most consistent performing sailors are ranked highest, but it rewards competing at both a local and international level. At the end it tries to balance two things: to reward the best sailor; to reward the sailor who sails a lot.

Comments:

– 1) Not all Snipe regattas sailed in 2016 in all SCIRA countries were included; with this type of regulation is important that the National secretaries, the clubs, or the competitors send the regattas reaults to SnipeToday, for loading them into the ranking file; there are countries that have very few races in the Ranking, or nothing at all (for example, this is the case of Japan: in some case we found results on the web… but written in Japanese); most regattas were not sent to SnipeToday, so the editors had to search or ask for the results.

Suggestions: For a complete Ranking at the end of the year, we need regatta results sent by all SCIRA countries (even for local regattas). Results must be sent to [email protected] to be included in the results. We hope that the national secretaries will coordinate with organizers to make sure this happens. (See regulation 5.3 of the proposal: “The results of the regatta must be transmitted via e-mail to [email protected] and published by the website www.snipetoday.org no later than 6 days after the end of the competition.”). (Also see regulation 5.2 “SSS regattas must be announced via e-mail to [email protected] at least 30 days before the beginning of the first scheduled race. – We will allow some leeway for the first three years, in order to allow fleets to get themselves organised”.)

– 2) Uploading the results is currently done manually, for each name and for each regatta, by Daniela Semec. It takes a lot of time and it is difficult and would be even more difficult if there were – hopefully – even more regattas to be loaded. Different regatta results list sailors’ names in different ways: first name, then surname or vice versa; sometimes a middle name and sometimes no (and many Spanish and Brazilians have very long names). This can lead to errors and duplications.

Suggestions: Regatta results need to be sent in a format where the names can be exported into the SSS excel file (not as a .jpeg). In future we hope to find a consistent format for the names, which will facilitate uploading data to the SSS file. Ideally, the best solution would be that a sailor’s SCIRA ID (from the new SCIRA Database) is added to the spreadsheet, which will minimize errors and facilitate uploading data. Also in this way membership can be controlled by SCIRA.

– 3) There are some inconsistencies in the scores and some adjustments can be made, in order to reward the best sailors.

– Now “SSS 2000 regattas” (considered important regatta traditional/promotional/regional reasons) are always in category 2, regardless of fleet size. This is not fair because in some cases we had only 10 boats for a SSS 2000 regatta.

Suggestions: “SSS2000 regattas” with less than 40 boats are considered category 3. Other option is to eliminate “SSS 2000 regattas” and rank these regattas only by the numbers of boats.

– We found an omission in the Category 2 regattas: the Europeans or WH&O limited by gender or age were not mentioned. So we included in the ranking the Junior Europeans results.

Suggestions: change the regulation 6.1, Cat. 2, c) to: “- c) World Championships, European Championships, WH&O Championships if limited by gender or age (i.e. Master Worlds, Junior Worlds, Women’s Championship etc.) regardless of fleet size;

Conclusions:

The ranking is an ambitious project that requires collaboration by all. It would be wonderful to have a ranking with all the races of the world, so that all Snipe sailors have their name in the ranking.

Maybe the project is too ambitious. The system was created inspired by the Star Sailors League, which is an association with paid employees. We are volunteers and this is the big difference. Daniela spent a lot of time loading data just for the pleasure of helping the Class. So this is the main reason why we need help from National Secretaries, sending us their racing calendars for their countries and then results from as many regattas as possible. For sure it is a big task.

We are all waiting to see also the Proposal #2 (by Cesar Travado).

Then I would like to know your opinion, before discussing about the best solution for the ranking inside the Promotion Committee and the Board.

Snipe Super Series – Proposal #1

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