Does AP make sense for pool competitions?

[Simos]

Anyone else feels that announced performances don't make much sense for POOL competitions? Sure they introduce some funny tactical game to freediving competitions but I think that it doesn't make much sense to judge ties etc by someone's ability to predict their own performance.

They would also probably lead to more BOs for those who announce something close to their max but then have a bad dive.

Imagine if long jumpers for exactly had to have an AP (in high jump of course it makes sense as the bar has to be set, same as depth disciplines)

 

[trux]

OK, just copying my answer from the other thread:

First of all, the AP is needed at all depth disciplines. Unless we want to change the format completely there too (many would be against free depth for safety reasons). So the rules handling announced performances are alrready there, hence it is simple applying them for the pool disciplines too. It makes it all also more unified, which simplifies the judging and ranking.

Then, the AP's at pool disciplines are very handy tool for the strategy fight, which makes the competitions often very interesting too. You can decide starting first with a shocking performance, decimating so your rivals psychologically, or you can put a high AP, and waiting to see what others have in their sleeves.

Besides it, it is handy for determining your starting time - especially useful at single day competitions, when you can then adjust the starting time to your habits, or it can permit you coaching others from your team.

And finally, unlike what you tell, it is very useful for the ties. If there were no AP's, there would be a very high number of ties. The AP's help resolving the majority of them.

All in all I find it quite useful, and making the competitions more interesting too.

 

[Simos]

I can easily come up with many ways that don't make sense to determine who goes first and what happens in a tie Trux

I actually think it's quite unfair, especially when it come to ties - what's wrong with two people coming joint first or sharing any position if they have swam the same distance. If you REALLY wanted to avoid ties, you could perhaps use their qualification distance - would be more fair than AP.

Surely it's really common in many sports to have ties...

When it comes to starting times, there are other ways of determining these - I don't see how playing 'poker' with AP helps this. Surely it would be fairer to draw names out of a hat!

I disagree that it makes judging and ranking simpler - sure the rules are more similar to depth but then the two disciplines are fundamentally different (the key difference that one is like long jump and the other a bit like high jump i.e. there is a 'bar' you need to set based on AP). It doesn't make it simpler though because when you start to apply the rules to pool disciplines, they don't make much sense. (at least to me )

 

[Simos]

Also you can tell it's a bit of a joke when people instead of announcing their performance they just choose to announce 1m (where in reality they will do 200m+!!!).

I understand it might be because they want to go first, but then why would their preference on starting time penalise them in case of a tie?

In addition - EVEN if we accept it makes sense, it would probably make more sense with people with the highest AP to go first? (ok admittedly it could make things less interesting for spectators but in any case a lot of the top guys now go first anyway)

 

[trux]

The AP's make rather good sense to me, and are quite well suited for deciding the startig times, as well as the ties.

At competitions, people often need to determine their starting time - for example they want to coach each other in a team, or they want to focus on a certain discipline, or they want to take a nap or something to eat between disciplines, or they need to catch a train before the competition is fully over, etc. etc. It is very useful, I am am glad this possibility is there. I see no reason why it should not be possible. People use it frequently to everyones satisfaction, and I did not meet yet any competitor who would be unhappy that he can influence the starting time. You are the first exception.

Now, of course you can tell competitors can chose their top time without any AP. But then everyone will run for the best strategic times without any risk. Currently, with the AP, you risk either too low AP (hence a loss in case of a tie), or a too high AP (and hence a penalty), so you have to choose your time carefully, which makes it definitely more just for everyone, and it assures easier distribution of the starting times.

Or you can decide the top times randomly, but it will be a great hassle for most of the competitors without any real reason. And you may influence the results unjustly. Having to risk to get a strategic time is much more just on my mind. Being appointed to the best strategic time is unjust, and may also allow the organzier manipulating the outcome, so that their friends will profit.

The only way that would make sense and be just in the same time, would be basing the starting times on the current ranking (FIPSAS in Italy has such system for the "elite" category), but then again you need an up-to-date reliable ranking for that. We do not have any complete ranking, since organizers usually don't send any results from competitions, or send them months late. And you as a competitor would not have any choice of the top time, so it would unnecessarily complicate the competitions to many. It would be fine and acceptbale in a professional sport, but it would be a great hassle for those who travel from far, and those who can't come with their coaches, and need to rely on buddies, or adjust their start times to the travel times.

Highest AP's at the beginning? Sorry, but that does not make any sense to me at all.

 

[trux]

BTW, speaking of FIPSAS in Italy, in the lower categories, the freedivers do not announce any AP (their max distances are limited by their category to 25m, 50m, 75m, or 100m), but they do have to announce their dive time. The one who swims the given distance in the time closest to his announced time wins. Rather weird, but makes also sens, and especially it is much safer for the beginners. Only once they do it through all the beginner categories (and the length limits), they get to the Elite category, where they can finally push the distances.

 

[efattah]

For depth, announcing a performance may be good for safety, but then why should the athlete be penalized for turning early? If you can prove that you did 100m in training, and you announce 101m, and turn at 86m, why should you be penalized? You still dove 86m.

If anything the announcement for depth should only specify a maximum limit, not a minimum limit. Especially in team world championships, where the announced performance forces people to break their eardrums because they do not want to incur penalty points. I recall in 2000, there was a special place to treat all the athletes with broken eardrums, and there were 6 or 7 athletes laying down there.

 

[trux]

For depth, announcing a performance may be good for safety, but then why should the athlete be penalized for turning early?

I think that the main reason is that if there were no penalty, everyone would make APs at the limit of their current possibilities (or even far beyond) which could result in more accidents.

 

[Simos]

Yes maybe on reflection highest AP at the beginning might not make sense. It depends whether you consider going first an advantage or disadvantage - it would seem that a lot of people announce 1m to go first (maybe I'm wrong) so sounds like there are advantages to going first.

At the few competitions I did Trux, being one of the last (it wasn't done by AP) was a pain - I had to wait around for hours, was tired and hungry and to be honest by the end I had lost the will to dive as it was late! So I was assuming that if you want to see 'big' performances, you are might be better off to have the best competitors first. (assuming you won't have STA and DYN in the same day and so on)

Also, the other reason to consider for having the highest AP first would be so that the last competitor doesn't have the advantage of playing it 'safe' as presumably by the time they go they might know what everyone else did and know exactly what they have to beat (whereas if they are going first, they can only do their best not knowing what's coming). I don't know if this makes sense, what do you think?

You sound quite happy with AP so I think it might be a bit hard to convince you otherwise I wouldn't have minded that much if the AP was used to determine who dives first (that's not a big deal) but to be used to determine ties for me is not fair.

 

[Simos]

For depth, announcing a performance may be good for safety, but then why should the athlete be penalized for turning early? If you can prove that you did 100m in training, and you announce 101m, and turn at 86m, why should you be penalized? You still dove 86m.

If anything the announcement for depth should only specify a maximum limit, not a minimum limit. Especially in team world championships, where the announced performance forces people to break their eardrums because they do not want to incur penalty points. I recall in 2000, there was a special place to treat all the athletes with broken eardrums, and there were 6 or 7 athletes laying down there.

I totally agree. I don't see the point in penalising based on AP, either in depth or in pool actually. Moreso in pool - whenever I see someone incurring penalty points in pool comps I keep wondering why on earth they didn't announce 1m and get it over and done with.

Also agree that the penalties make things more unsafe - in depth for the reasons Eric mentioned and in pool as mentioned in the other thread because you don't want to incur penalties (ironically for those who announce true AP as opposed to just 1m).

 

[Simos]

If you wanted to keep penalising competitors that don't reach AP in the pool, I think it would make sense to also treat AP in the pool as the 'maximum' they can dive to (and any metres/minutes over the AP not giving points).

But overall, I'd be more in favour of removing the penalties relating to APs as well as using them in any way to rank competitors (e.g. in case of ties)

 

[trux]

For the top competitors, being the last is a big advantage, because they know what distance they have to do exactly to get the desired rank, so they do not need to risk going too far and failing. However, if you are sure you can do a huge performance shocking your adversaires, it is better doing it at the beginning, since it will create a huge psychological pressure during a long time. The preference also depends on many other factors: on your biological clock, on other disciplines, and on that how you can handle the stress, etc, etc. However, at WCs, being in the last round is usually a big advantage, and that's also why (until Lignano) competitors dove concurrently in the smae time. And again, the risk that several athletes would do the same performance is quite high at WC's (a lot of athlete of similar top level), so the additional factor of AP is a welcome help in deciding the winner.

 

[Simos]

It just feels wrong having people who have successfully dived the longest/furthest/deepest not win comps because of AP technicalities Trux. I'm sure you've seen a lot of depth comps for example (I am sure because even I have seen a couple) at which the gold medal did not go to the person that did the deepest dive.

In fact I've seen comp results where there was a significant difference in depth achieved and people who announce deeper dives were all turning early (probably conditions) but still a lot deeper than the comp winner...

 

[trux]

Simos, you don't read much what others write, do you?

I wrote the argument for APs at depth in my previous post (better told the one before it). There is no ideal solution, but still I believe it is a bit safer with APs and penalties than without them. If someone has risked too much and have put the AP over his possibilities, it is correct that he gets penalized, and the one who assured 100% wins. It is a factor that stimulates safety and vigilance, and moderates exagerated depth attempts. Although not perfect, I am afraid that without it, the competitions would be much wilder and less safe.

 

[efattah]

Although not perfect, I am afraid that without it, the competitions would be much wilder and less safe.

This argument has never really worked in the past. When we still had the 'no-samba' rule, there was huge resistance to switching to the objective surface protocol. The belief was that with the surface protocol, every diver would have a samba at the end of every dive. And competitions would become crazy and unsafe. However I would say that subjectively, the number of sambas and blackouts today is no different than it was during the 'no-samba' rule.

 

[Simos]

Simos, you don't read much what others write, do you?

I wrote the argument for APs at depth in my previous post (better told the one before it). There is no ideal solution, but still I believe it is a bit safer with APs and penalties than without them. If someone has risked too much and have put the AP over his possibilities, it is correct that he gets penalized, and the one who assured 100% wins. It is a factor that stimulates safety and vigilance, and moderates exagerated depth attempts. Although not perfect, I am afraid that without it, the competitions would be much wilder and less safe.

I see the argument for penalties and APs a lot more for depth Trux but I can see the other side too. If I am honest I don't feel strongly at all about AP in depth - there arguments both ways and to be honest I am really not the best person to talk about depth competitions since there are safety implications and it's mostly to do with the mentality of competitors.

I know how I think (which is clearly different than most) and for me it wouldn't make much difference in my AP if there were penalties or not for turning early. Then again, if i missed an EQ and needed to turn, i'd just turn without thinking twice about penalties. But removing the penalties can go either way in terms of safety for depth.

To be honest for depth it depends how you view the objective - if it's to get the tag at AP or whether it's a maximum. Some might see it like 'high jump' and even argue that you should get 0 points if you don't reach the tag (I agree this would be too extreme and dangerous).

All these are non-issues for pool competitions. I see all the points you are making about starting times etc and of course I know it introduces a bit of game theory with APs, which most people might like and some not so much. I think the only way to find out would be to try and determine how things could work without APs and then see if we like that better than the current system - without a better alternative, it's all theory anyway

 

[MikkoP]

I also think that APs are senseless for pool disciplines. The only reason to maybe justify them is the possibility to affect your starting time, which helps coaching, but I think there would be other ways to do that. And it actually says in the rules that starting order in WC comp can be determined by AP, or by draw. If determined by draw, APs would make absolutely zero sense. About other pool comps I didn't even find a rule about how to decide the starting order. It is usually done by AP, but I couldn't find a rule that says it should be.

Resolving ties by AP makes unusually little sense to me. The only real reason we are using APs in pool is to help decide the starting order. By making higher AP win in case of same RP we are basically saying that divers who dive earlier instead of later are worse than those who dive later, whatever the reason.
So, if you announce low so that you can go early in competition and that you can coach your team mates after that, and then you tie with someone else and lose to their higher AP because their team's coaching order went that day the other way around than your team's, is your performance less valuable than that of the other diver?
Of course not! Imagine this scenario in any other sport. There is a tie, two people did the same result, but because one of them did it first and the other one did it after him, the one who did it later is clearly better, right? Ummm, no.

On top of this all there is a rule that says "If two or more athletes in the same competition in the same discipline declare different announced performances and they achieve the same realized (WR) performance, then the first athlete to realize the record performance is the new world record holder. The subsequent athletes that realize the performance would be joint world record holders." So, equal WRs with different APs are worth the same (except they get different medals), but all other equal performances with different APs are not worth the same.

If we have two equally good dives, I don't see why on Earth we should make up rules to decide that, in fact, one of those two equally good dives was better than the other, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual dive. If they are equally good, they are equally good and that should be completely fine.

 

[Jouskari]

I´m pretty much with MikkoP on the "AP for pool comps" -issue. I belive that in the beginning the whole idea with AP:s for pool was based on the idea that all the good guys (and gals) would announce a high AP thus having all the really long dives in the end of the comp (=exciting). Then someone smart realized that you could actually use the AP for tactics also. Therefore I belive that the starting order should be be based on qualification heats results or be randomized (draw) and have no affect in a tie situation.

However, in a depth comp. the penalty for a "short" dive is a bit more complicated. Call me reckless, but without any AP penalty I would just put 200 m on the rope and see how far I can go. Apnea is still not the limiting factor for me in depth so the rope length wouldn´t be and issue if there weren´t any penalties.

Again I think it´s only an issue of adjusting the penalties to a more acceptable level (as in the grab and touch rules). E.g. the max amount of penaltypoints for a "short" turn would be limited to 5 points. Grab rule could be 1 points in depth and pool or something like that. Atleast this way it would be really easy to edit the rules without confusing people to much and opening up possible other loopholes.

 

[Haydn]

The thing is, there is a huge advantage in announcing a short AP. You dive earlier. Your pre dive routine is peaceful, you do not hear the other announcements/competitors, you control the pre dive adrenaline you dive your own dive.

This advantage is opposed by the fact that you do not know what you have to do to win. Actually, knowing what you have to do to get on the podium can easily cause you to over reach and get a red card (maybe just as making a safe but too short dive also results in a lose). These choices add to the tactical excitement of any comp.

Surely it is best overall for the diver to have some say into the order of the dives rather than be told when to go? The diver lives and dies by the sword weilded in his own hand.

My last competitive dynamic was Hawaii Pacific Cup 2002, my AP was shorter than my best and this caused the problem. There were four other divers listed that appeared to be able to do better than me, and I fancied a podium place. I did not have the luxury of diving inside my limits, but would have to attempt a substantial personal best. I LMCd at 156m. The winning dive (a couple competitors after me) was 150m. My dive was the only one to make the 150meter turn (a rare thing 10 years ago). Obviously had I announced a higher AP, I would have known to stop at 151 to guarantee a podium place. Then sit back and watch Herbert and an Aussie beat me, and I would get third.

The thing is Herbert eventually dived but stopped at 144 and the Aussie declared a silly AP like 200m but meant to write 20m (or some other thing like that) did 10m and got a red card for a humour violation. Of course, I thought he was some super human declaring such a distance, but it added to the tactics and caused me to try to do my very best.

So I, having LMCd, should really have stopped sooner and win the comp.

It wasnt just the dive, but the tactics of the AP system that affected the performances and the final results.

The AP system enriches the event.

Now my heart works properly, I really should have another go.........just for old times sake.

 

[efattah]

The AP system enriches the event.

Problem is, the order is not determined by the announced performance. It *usually* is, but it doesn't have to be, it is up to the organizer.