We have an incredibly informative interview today on the topic of the USAT ranking system, current criteria for qualifying for USAT Nationals and ITU AG Worlds. We are going to be joined by USAT's COO Tim Yount and Rankings Coordinator Nick Koppin.
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Thanks to last week's guests Todd Carver and Cliff Simms of Specialized's RETUL division. They shared some great insights into how they are using Retul data from thousands of bike fits to shape product development at Specialized. If you missed that interview, go back to episode #155 and check it out.
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I have a couple few friends in my neighborhood who I have been training and racing with for more than a decade. Two in particular, Todd Stockford and Tom Beal. I never have to remind myself to look up the All American rankings, because the moment that the All American list is announced, I get a group text with my neighbor's standings and scores.
When my friends and I carpool to races, we talk about the scores and which races someone qualified for Nationals. We'll talk about where Nationals or Worlds is going to be this year or the next. It gives our racing context and purpose.
But there have been things that have been a bit of a mystery to me. Things like how did USAT come up with the decimal score they assigned me during a race? I've generally understood that the people that show up to a race can influence the score that I get, but how? I have an athlete, Amy Miller, who has qualified for Nationals and is very much in capable of achieving All American and Team USA, and I wanted to get the facts for her. So I thought let's get the experts on the show and help all our listeners.
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Topics:
- USAT Ranking System
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- Converting a race time into decimal format: From Nick - we change participants’ times into minutes using a mathematical formula
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- Example 1: a time of 00:49:30.0 would change to 49.5)
- Example 2: a time of 02:11:08.0 would change to 131.133 – 2x60(hours into minutes) + 11 minutes + 8/60(seconds into minutes)
- Any time over one hour will take the number of hours and turn that into minutes. Two hours equates to 120 and three hours will equate to 180.
- This is why the above example has a decimal time of 131.133. 2 hours into minutes - 120 + the 11 additional minutes. and then changing seconds into minutes as well.
- How are Race Scores Calculated?
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- Our ranking system uses pacesetters to determine a par time for each race. Every race has a unique par time, depending on who has competed. It is important to understand the basic concept behind the ranking scores: scores are calculated as a comparison between an athlete’s race time and the projected time of the best age group athlete in the country (par time). For example, if the par time of a sprint race is 60 minutes, someone who completed the race in 72 minutes would be 20% slower than the best age group athlete, calculated as 1.2 times the par time. However, we do not know who the best age group athlete in the country is – so we estimate his/her performance by creating a Par Time.
- It would have been possible to give out ranking scores based on these numbers, where the lowest score is best; a score of 1.0 being the best score and all other scores going up from there. This way, it would be easy to see how each athlete’s times compare to the times of others. However, in most sports the higher scores reflect a better performance. It was decided to take the inverse of this number (1/1.2 for this example giving .833333) to achieve this goal. Fractions of “1” are not sufficient, so this number is multiplied by 100 (giving our example athlete a score of 83.3333).
There are six steps used to determine race scores:
- Find all possible pacesetters: Determine which participants received an overall score in the previous year. These participants are considered “pacesetters” in this event. (Note: pacesetters are not athletes who competed in the race the previous year as well as this year. Pacesetters are any athlete who received an overall score based on any three on-road triathlons (2 or more races of any other sport) from the previous year. An overall score tells us what type of performances the athlete generally puts in.
- Convert minutes into decimal format: We change participants’ times into minutes so they can work in the mathematical formula (example: a time of 00:49:30.0 would change to 49.5) (example: a time of 02:11:08.0 would change to 131.133 – 2x60(hours into minutes) + 11 minutes + 8/60(seconds into minutes)
- Find each pacesetter’s calculated time: This is done by multiplying each participant’s time in minutes by their pacesetter score (final score from previous year) then dividing that by 100 (this removes a certain percentage of their time). This tells us how quickly an athlete that is ranked at a 100 could have completed the course.
- Remove top and bottom 20% of calculated times: Drop the top 20% & bottom 20% of calculated times. This removes any extraordinarily great performances (a pacesetter significantly outperforms their previous year pacesetter ranking) and extraordinarily poor performances (causes could be a flat tire or dehydration for example).
- Determine Par Time: Average the remaining 60% of calculated times to come up with the “par time.” We are interested in the “par time” as this is what all of the participants’ times will be compared to when calculating their individual rankings. Competitors are actually racing against the “par time” as far as scoring is concerned.
- Determine each participant’s race score: Divide each participant’s (decimal) finish time by the par time, invert and multiply by 100. (For example: assume a participant had a finish time of 49.5 and Par Time was set at 45 minutes Original Score: 49.5/45 = 1.1 Inverted Score: 1/1.1 = .909090 Race Score: .909090*100 = 90.9090
- Races with 2, 3, and 4 pacesetters, do not have any pacesetters removed from the par time calculation. It is not until you reach 5 pacesetters that we will begin to remove the top and bottom 20%. We do not want to remove pacesetters when there are too few and we can't get a grasp on their performances by removing them.
8.For women, they then get a gender graded adjustment of 10%.
- Triathlon Trivia - qualifying for ITU Worlds and Team USA
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- What percentile to you need to rank in a:s
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- Local - 15%
- State - 25%
- Region - 35%
- True or False: You don't have to compete at AG Nationals to qualify for Worlds and Team USA
- The first ___ of the top ___ All American in each AG can earn a spot to Worlds and Team USA
- True or False: A collegiate athlete can qualify for AG Nationals at NCAA or Club Nationals
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