Am trying to understand how this scheme works.
When I look at the results for M45-49 2023 the last bronze finisher is in 154th place so the top 12.5% out of 1227.
In 2022 there 1502 athletes in the same category and the last bronze finisher was in 215th place so the top 14.3%.
Can someone help with the difference? How is the top 17% calculated?
Thanks
I believe you need to drill down further to per nation basis. 17% per nation?
Yep I put the filter on the country and was comparing 2022 vs 2023 as I was curious. Doesn’t seem to add up unless am missing something
I don’t believe it is calculated on a country basis. Just overall.
I think it has to do with ties. For example when looking at the M45-49 2022 results, the last bronze position (Overall Position 2435) is shared by 4 individuals and Overall position 2434 also has 4 individuals listed. With 18,856 finishers listed, the expected final bronze position would be 3205. I would guess that there are 3205 individuals making up the 2435 overall positions.
Their ranking system is mathematically wrong but in the end they do get the correct % of people in the right categorizes.
The issue is athletes with the same score receive the same rank. Where they get it wrong is they continue the rank sequenece following those duplicates instead of skipping the # of duplicates.
For example
1 - 100
2 - 95
3 - 90
3 - 90
4 - 85
5 - 80
It really should be
1 - 100
2 - 95
3 - 90
3 - 90
5 - 85
6 - 80
enough duplicates happen that by the time you get to the last bronze level athletes that rank count can be off by 100s.
If you take the time to count the athletes ( I have so don’t waste your time lol), they are split appropriately based on the % split.
I have not followed this AWA thing much as I have been in and out of Mdot racing over the last 8 years. I think several years ago, I ended up top ten in the annual ranking just because I did three IM’s modertaly “not slow”. In fact, I have three IM’s knocked off by July, so at one point I was “number one ranking” which was kind of stupid because there were lots of guys waaaay faster than me who maybe did one IM and some 70.3’s.
If I understand it correctly max points for an IM is 5000, and half IM is 3000 and three races max.
But why not just make it max two IM’s for 5000 points each and as may half IM’s as you want (maybe cap it at 5 but at 2000 points each). So someone who does two fulls and 5 halfs could end up with 20,000 points, someone who does 5 half IM’s can end up with 10,000, but someone who does 4 halfs and is fast can likely beat a slow guy who does two fulls.
From a repeat customer loyalty angle, I think it is not a good thing long term to have too many multi IM years anyway (been there paid the price) and you don’t want people leaving the sport, but multi half IM years are totally doable.
I only did two Mdot half’s this year and it looks like I squeek into bronze. (Also did two local olympics and a local half)
The other big issue with how they assess points is the world championship races aren’t given more points. IM is doing this for the pro series, so they should adjust AWA for this as well.
It’s fair that they include full distance races into the valuation as that’s their prerogative. But personally I’ll only do a full distance every 2 years or occasionally every other year. 70.3 I handle fine on regular training volume. Full distance is too much of a time commitment for me to justify every year.