Category 1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8
1 2 3 4
Name Major Worlds Continental International National
Regional Local
For Future Use
However, points awarded per category will be typically downgraded according to the type of class: Group
Status Olympic World sailing class
Non-world sailing class Non-open event
CATEGORY RANKING POINTS Pos
Cat 1
1st 5th
10th 15th 25th 50th 75th
100th
points 4000 1500 600 200 50
Cat 2
points 2500 1000 300 100 88.4 59.2 30.1 1
from the Star class, but this season results and points scored from Snipe, Finn and Soling events will be added to the Ranking and other classes are being invited to submit results from their events to be part of the Ranking too. Even at this early stage the
Ranking already has 2,500 sailors registered in its ‘system’. Given SSL’s aim of including all dinghies and small keelboat classes, and to do it globally, this monumental task starts to take on Human Genome Project proportions involving 10 Olympic classes, 143 World Sailing classes and 1,000+ non-World Sailing classes. But while it may be early days in
accumulating the data, thanks to borrowing from equivalent systems used in other sports, the Star Sailors League Ranking is already highly advanced in terms of its maths. At present it divides events into seven levels of category: for example, the winner of an U23 Finn World Championship would score 65 per cent of 2,500 points (ie 1,625 points). Rather than allocating points
only to the top 10 or top 25 finishers at each event, the Star
Examples Finn, Laser, etc.
Snipe, Dragon, Moth, etc Surprise, Corsaire, etc
Youth, veteran, disabled etc Cat 3
points 1000 500 180 60
53.1 35.7 18.4 1
Cat 4
points 500 250 80 40
35.4 23.9 12.5 1
The Ranking system established by SSL (above), which started out grading Star results only, has now been extended to other classes in a bid to collate data to rank sailors across the board. Right: Paul Cayard, the 1998 Star World Champion who has sailed in the class more or less continuously since the late 1970s, has long been a fan of simplifying the sport for outsiders and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the League from the start
Cat 5
points 250 125 40 20
17.8 12.2 6.6 1
% of category points 100% 85% 75% 65%
Cat 6
points 100 50 20 10
3.6 Cat 7
points 10
5.5
Example
Olympic Games, SSL Finals America’s Cup
World Championship SSL Grand Slam Star Gold Event
Continental Championship Star Silver Event
Sailing World Cup World Match Racing Tour Extreme Sailing Series TP52, RC44
Nat. Championships Star District Champ. (i.e. more than 29 boats)
10 – 29 boats 3 – 9 boats
Max Points For Winner
4,000 2,500 1,000 500
250 100 10
more than those who finished below this, for whom the Ranking points level out. Fortunately, the Star Sailors
League Ranking software is intelligent enough to calculate all this. Significantly, a further refinement
of the Ranking is that it does not continually accumulate points, which would favour sailors who competed in the most events. Instead, each sailor’s total score on the Star Sailors League Ranking is the sum of their six top-scoring events (in terms of ranking points). This does favour those who compete in more events, just not as directly. The Ranking is rolling, so it
doesn’t restart at the beginning of the year, for example, and is updated weekly. Event scores on the Ranking last for two years and drop to 50 per cent of their initial value in year two. There are separate rankings for
skippers and crew and there are even rules in place if skippers/ crews change midway through an event. Given not just the complexity of
this, but also the sheer number of sailors who will ultimately end up in this database once more classes are added, it is understandable that the Star Sailors League is keen to bring onboard a company like SAP to assist in the data acquisition and number crunching. From there it would be a small
step to add yacht racing. The Ranking has started with small boats, the Star Sailors League argue, principally because this is the area of the sport practised by the highest number of participants and yet these sailors typically receive the least amount of attention because they lack the substantial marketing budgets of high-profile America’s Cup or Volvo Ocean Race campaigns. A fair, accurate and meaningful
Sailors League Ranking allocates points to everyone, right down to the crew in last place. Therefore, in addition to the above points allocations, the number of Ranking points a sailor scores at an event also has to be based on the number of each event’s participants. It doesn’t end there either. The
allocation of Ranking points also favours the best exponentially. So those who have performed best – specifically the top five, the top 10 and top 15 – all score substantially
ranking would definitely serve to make sailing more understandable to the public. It is argued that sailing’s diversity is also its downfall. By having more than 100 world championships annually, the sport lacks focus. The Star Sailors League Ranking aims to rectify this as well as being highly beneficial to the athletes themselves, creating a reliable benchmark by which to compare themselves with their peers, as well as their own personal performance year on year, in turn encouraging them to improve. If there is an entity likely to
succeed in making all this happen it is the Star Sailors League.
starsailors.com
q SEAHORSE 75
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