In a message dated 4/10/03 12:59:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Stand0nIt@aol.com writes:
> The purpose of the Bonus point was to reward putting your best time down in
> class competition and add validity to the challenge. This was a proposed
> part of a plan to bring the focus of ProSolo to the Challenge rather than
> the
> "qualifying round." The thinking was that everyone would be more focused
> on
> the Challenge if the sandbagging element could be removed and the resulting
>
> effect on Class points would be secondary. Perhaps the smarter thing to do
>
> would be to give additional challenge points for being the only qualifier
> in
> your class.
>
> The thing to remember here is the bonus point was intended to fix the
> Challenge problem, not to mix things up in the Classes. Whether or not
> that
> would be the end case I do not know, but there is a desire to make the
> Challenge (as it is intended) the most important part of ProSolo and less
> focus on the Class Competition.
>
> heyward
> Free Agent
>
I understand the desire from a sponsor/marketing/sanctioning body
standpoint to place more emphasis on the Challenge and an "overall
winner" for the individual events and at the end of the season. However,
I don't think I speak only for myself in saying that many people who run
multiple ProSolo's (in contrast to those who run only one event a year
that happens to be close to them geographically) are more interested
in winning a Class Championship than the Overall Championship.
I think the Challenge is seen as being much more difficult to win, and
therefore the majority of ProSolo competitors tend to concentrate on
winning their class competition, with the Challenge as a "bonus" for the
weekend. I'm sure there are those whose efforts are directed towards
winning the Overall Championship, but I think that's a relatively small
number of people. The problem, IMO, is that you get a small number
of events that count toward Overall points so as not to discourage
participation by requiring people to travel extensively during the year to
run a larger number of events. But, IF you expanded the number of events
that counted toward Overall at the end of the year, people like myself
would likely give more attention to the Challenge, since one bad event
Challenge-wise wouldn't essentially put you out of the running for the year.
As it stands now, a red-light or cone or a match-up against someone who
won a "light" class can knock you out of the Challenge in an early round
and seriously damages your chances of being in the Overall hunt when
you get to Topeka. In Class competition, you have more runs, and even
though you can still cone or redlight away your best run, the perception
is that the odds of doing well are more in your favor.
I think all of this is one (not the only) of the reasons that Tours continue
to grow in popularity and ProSolo continues to lag behind.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't......
All IMO,
GH Sharp
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