I know there are many opinions about the USAT ranking system and how they determine points, but why do they just stop updating for weeks / months on end only to update them so much later? (If they even do…)
There are results from early June races still not posted, yet I know the race director submitted them the day after the mid-June event.
Why are the rankings so poorly managed and so infrequently updated?
I have heard that amateur golf wouldn’t stand for this but of course that has a much, much bigger following than triathlon.
Because handicap rankings are an integral part of golf especially at the amateur level. Without a working handicap system golfers of different skill levels could not compete on a level playing field the way they do now.
Rankings have zero impact on age group triathletes because instead of using a handicap system triathlon uses cohorts of similar aged athletes to level the playing field. There’s almost no reason for a ranking system to exist in triathlon so it’s not a high priority.
Its probably something as simple as they are broke, and cannot afford to hire people to be on top of this anymore. They spend a lot of money on the olympic program, way more than they get, and I think their overhead over the years has just gotten away from their revenue…
But why is it so awful?
Short answer… because they’re awful at it. I’m guessing they have zero IT savvy staff and farm it out. Maybe they don’t have the budget to pay the right person to make it less awful.
They rolled out a new ranking system site but it looks like just a new front end and the backend is the same old mismanaged poorly maintained thing it has been for years now.
If I were put in charge of it I’d work the glitches out AND include anyone that did the required amount of events in a calendar year… take out the stipulations to have an active membership in early December AND include maybe the rare few that did not have a yearly membership and paid a few one day licenses.
Most importantly make it so races from RDs were imported, processed and posted to the rankings system in a timely fashion… my rant as an IT professional.
I feel like early June races were being added quite regularly but dropped off a cliff in the last month. I think there may have only been 3 races added last week; the list indicates 275 races and early last week (not certain which day) there were 272.
Its probably something as simple as they are broke, and cannot afford to hire people to be on top of this anymore. They spend a lot of money on the olympic program, way more than they get, and I think their overhead over the years has just gotten away from their revenue…
Or they are just lazy…
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I believe Rocky’s intent 2017 was to tune the organization more to the age groupers but they have resumed their Olympic focus.
I listened to an interview when he joined and he stated the experience for athletes is about the same as the DMV - you pay a fee, you get your card. He was looking to change that but then the pandemic halted plans.
I did the one day license for all of my races the first 3-4 years in the sport. I didn’t qualify for a ranking so I didn’t worry too much about my score. My scores were improving every year though and when I started to break into the top 10% I decided to do the 1-year membership and to do more races so I could get a ranking. It killed me waiting for my score after each race. The average time for my races to be scored was about 8 weeks. I wanted scores to be posted in about 8 hours.
Some races get scored quicker than others. I could do a race in May and a race in July and have the score from the race in July scored before the race in May.
This year I did two races the first week of June. The races were spread two states apart. I was trying to guess which one would be scored first. I was surprised to see that both of them were scored in about 10 days. I thought that whatever they did to update the system must be working. I guess not. I guess I was just lucky to have both events scored so fast.