winstonw wrote:Alex Simmons/RST wrote:And I wouldn't make the assumption no-one around here has some involvement and/or insight in cycling administration in Australia.
If you are involved, then you'd know parameters such as ITT result, power, HR, and bodyweight have been seriously proposed to make grading between clubs and States more uniform than what they are.
According to you, no two clubs have the same strength of racing, and only race performance determines grading best. It's a non sequitur, and the kind of naivety that says "if a system isn't perfect, it isn't any good, and wouldn't be an improvement over the status quo".
Maybe you're also a club handicapper Alex. Tell us how you go about allocating handicaps in a club handicap road race, when most riders have never placed in their current grade.
Please stop with the strawmen. It's getting tiresome. I've never said any of those things.
Yes, I have been a handicapper, amongst other roles at club and State level.
WRT handicapping, I use actual race results, since they are, by far, the best predictor of race ability. I have successfully handicapped many hundreds of races. Club, some open level, combine level, and a race series I ran for two years.
If a rider has not raced, then they race a default lower grade (unless it's blindingly obvious from pre-existing knowledge of that rider they needs to be a bit high or lower - e.g you observe them riding in organised rides). After that, their race results will determine whether or not they need to go up or down.
Novices need to race a lower grade in any case to demonstrate they have the requisite skills for racing, even if their fitness is superior to their competitors. Newbies are briefed accordingly. This is especially common in track racing. If a club has particular concern about new riders blitzing the rest of the grade, then the club/race can institute their own rules to deal with that, such as newbies can't earn points or prizes in their initial races. Then the emphasis is on them learning the ropes, while not overly affecting the race for the rest.
- Requiring power data from riders at all levels to grade people is simply impractical to implement, and in any case is less reliable as a predictor of race performance than actual race performance.
- Anyone who thinks HR has any relevance shows a total lack of understanding of the basics of physiological performance, let alone race categorisation/grading.
- Use of ITT results can be a guide (not always a good one given the different requirements for performance in ITT vs road/crit/track), but then we are talking about people who haven't raced
so we are back to getting them to race in the first place. (As for TT's themselves, they don't require grading, only seeding).
So, once you've got them started in racing through their assigned novice grading, use their crit/road/track racing results to assign their crit/road/track gradings, since that will be far superior than using any non specific data.
Variability in grading exists in all sports. Play A grade football in a small country town, and it just might be you struggle to make the grade in a large metro league. Play lots of golf on a easy course and earn a low handicap, then get slaughtered when you head somewhere else for their comp.
So, have I said that the grading system is perfect and can't be improved? A: No.
Should we use power meter data to grade people? A: No.
What's the best way to grade people? A: Use their race results.