Final Scores and Changes in the Ranking List

With the WC season under go and the switch to a new competition format, discussions whether the right shooter wins or not have surfaced. The change in format hasn’t just brought on new competitions but also how athletes approaches the final and what skills are required to win them. In the past there was a possibility to survive a final by posting excellent qualification scores and then live off them, now that’s impossible. You still have to be a good qualifier, but as long as you end up in the final, higher scores are not necessary. Instead, final scores becomes that much more important.

Final Scores 1990 to 2012 – Men and Women Compared

This post will tie into the two previous ones about final scores over the last 22 years. For more information and how the data collection was done, check out the posts on women and men. The post you’re about to read will conclude this short series and have the focus on differences between gender.

As you might have noticed in the two earlier posts, scores have followed a nice normal curve even though it’s slightly skewed to one side. Why that is has already been explained before, interesting though is that we can already see a difference between men and women.

Final Scores 1990 to 2012 – Men

Results for women’s score development was published a week ago, you can find it here if interested.

Results will be showed the same way here as was used in the women’s post to simplify comparisons. Method and material is the same as before, the only difference is the addition of one WC in the beginning of the nineties. So total number of competitions are 135 and final competitors 1079.

Results

Final Scores 1990 to 2012 – Women

A new year with new competition formats is upon us. The first competitions to use the new format have already been wrapped up but many more is to come. We have both national and international competitions, continental championships (like the upcoming European in February) and World Cups. Since the system of firing ten single shots for everyone is now in the past, I thought this might be a good time to look into how the development of final scores over the past two decades has changed. I have written two posts on final scores (and qualification) in the past: Olympics and WC Finals, check those out for more information on the topic.

New Competition Format Used in RIAC and Swedish Cup

This will be a short post with just a few links for anyone interested in how the new competition format might work.

2013 has just started and with it all rule changes come into play. The main one, and the one that will affect competitions from now on is the new competition format. As all of you are probably aware of by this point, finals will from now on start from zero and of a knock-out style. For the top two shooters this means 20 shots and a maximum of 218 p (decimals included). Considering what elite shooters are currently scoring in finals, a more reasonable score is closer to 210 p (105*2) to take the gold.

World Cup Final in Bangkok

The last international competition of the season has just finished. We have seen some tight competitions earlier this year with a few new names to remember for the future. Traditionally the WC final hasn’t been that tight due to a limited number of participants and this one was no different. Results were mixed with some really good and some more mediocre.

World Cup Final Bangkok 2012 – Participants

Who are participating in this year’s Final and what kind of scores have they produced since last year in Wroclaw, Poland?

This is a short post where I’ll just let the numbers speak for themselves:

Score Development Since 2000 in World Cup Finals

Summary

I was expecting to see a significant increase in scores over time, but the actual fact is this link doesn’t exist in the time frame I used (2000-2011). For women, there’s no link at all with scores going up and down from year to year. For men it’s a different story. Yes, results were not significant, but scores have at least gone up with 0.15 points/year in average. After adding final scores to the mix, shooters are also closer together (making the competition tighter) than in the women’s competition.

Updated: How World Cup Scores and Olympic Ranking Results Compare to Each Other

As a finale to the posts about the Olympics, here are the last two updated posts used for the predictions. Since the competitions have passed, it’s time to add this years results to the data set and see whether the correlation really exists or not. For method, see the original post.

Summary

By adding this year, the correlation barely went up which points towards a lack of correlation between the two competitions. When increasing a data set we normally see an increase in numerous values at the same time. When this doesn’t happen, it can be considered a decrease instead and a lack in overall correlation. This points towards it being coping skills and the form that specific day that counts more than competition scores the present season.

Women’s Air Rifle

Picture from london2012.com

Early yesterday the first air rifle competition finished with Siling Yi at the top of the podium. She shot the highest score in the qualification round (alongside Sylwia Bogacka) and the final round for a finish of 502.9p and only 6 tenths of a point from the Olympic record. It was really nice seeing her smile after the win, she looked relieved and very happy!

Leading the final after the qualification did Sylwia with 399p. She started the final the same the qualification ended, by shooting five straight tens. This increased her lead and everything seemed to be going in her favor before an unlucky 9.7 brought her down to second place. She then kept this to close the competition with a silver medal.

Predictions for the Olympic Games – Men

For the women’s predictions and method, click here.

Results

I used the same method here as for the women’s predictions. These are our top 20 according to the background data I had to work with:

Predictions for the Olympic Games – Women

Time for predictions! For the data I’m basing these on have a look at the category “Olympics” where I go through links between World Cup results and Olympic results. I doubt this will actually work (picking out who will end up in each ranking position) but it’s fun so I’m doing it anyway. I’ll evaluate how it went when the competition has passed and also update the data set.

Results

How to read the chart: Column 1 and 2 contains every participant and their respective country. Column 3 has their MQS (minimum qualifications score), required for participation, 4 is their current world ranking and 5 and 6 contains their average score and placing during 2012 WC season.