SON 2022

[Noodles]

Details for next years SON format revealed

NEW FIM SPEEDWAY OF NATIONS FORMAT FOR 2022 (speedwaygp.com)

[waiheke1]

2 hours ago, Noodles said:

Details for next years SON format revealed

NEW FIM SPEEDWAY OF NATIONS FORMAT FOR 2022 (speedwaygp.com)

Quite like this, but I don't think they've got the format for deciding the winner right. Points should carry forward to the final- make the final worth double points if concerned there is a risk the result is already decided- so that there is an advantage to team qualifying top, and not just a "win by not filling last place" in the final. 

[Humphrey Appleby]

2 hours ago, waiheke1 said:

Quite like this, but I don't think they've got the format for deciding the winner right. Points should carry forward to the final- make the final worth double points if concerned there is a risk the result is already decided- so that there is an advantage to team qualifying top, and not just a "win by not filling last place" in the final. 

It's still a glorified best pairs competition, however it's dressed up...

[enotian]

in the same way the Superbowl is just a glorified American Football match.

Glad the U21 reserve has gone.

Smaller carbon footprint as well

[HenryW]

Delighted to see the U21 rider requirement gone from the tournament.
No disrespect to the guys that raced in that position over the last few years, but it devalued the competition.

I still dislike the "pairs" format compared to a 4 team world championship (2 team test match format would be even better), but can kind of understand the reasoning for moving to this format while there is a lack of depth in most nations.

It'll be interesting to see how well attended these meetings are. 
It feels like the new rights holders are going back over the ground that BSI trod when they first took over (when speedway was healthier in more nations), then bailed out of as they realised that running all meetings in one country led to reduced attendance.

Having said that, I'd still prefer a different format to the suggested 2 semi finals and a final.
The difference between the Nations is too big to make that really interesting racing wise. 
I think I'd prefer a format where there was a qualification ladder through the meetings, but I guess that doesn't work as well as it means more meetings without the BIG names.

Just using the Nations that competed this year and their finishing order, I am thinking of something like this:
Day 1: USA, Russia, Finland, Italy, Slovenia, Ukraine, Czechia
Day 2: France, Latvia, Sweden, Germany + top 3 from Day 1
Day 3: GB, Poland, Denmark, Australia + top 3 from Day 2

It feels like that would give more competitive meetings on each day, but would mean that the BIG nations don't appear until Day 3, so probably doesn't work well for TV contracts despite being better for competitive racing.

Edited November 12, 2021 by HenryW

[enotian]

Agree. Trouble with the 4TT  SWC is there's currently only about nine countries who could field four man teams without dipping into riders without sufficient experience. If you want a wider range of countries involved pairs is the format.

Not sure that the seven team format is ideal other than it churns out about the right number of heats and every team faces each other.

Probably only warrants a one off final. 16 countries, 20 seeded qualifying heats (2 last places and you're eliminated) followed by quarter finals, semi finals and a grand final. 27 heats in total. Sure some of the qualifiers would be mismatches but the jeopardy of finishing last would apply to each heat.

I guess you could spread the format out over three days with the 20 qualifying heats on day one with the bottom eight on day two and the top eight on day three, so the home nation is at least involved in two of the three meetings but really the one off meeting should be all that is needed for the SON.  Let the SWC have the multiple events, one venue format.

[Humphrey Appleby]

17 hours ago, enotian said:

in the same way the Superbowl is just a glorified American Football match.

It's played between full teams/squads though. Not as an 8 v 8 Arena Football match, nor is the NBL played as a 3-on-3 basketball tournament. 

[Humphrey Appleby]

1 hour ago, enotian said:

Agree. Trouble with the 4TT  SWC is there's currently only about nine countries who could field four man teams without dipping into riders without sufficient experience. If you want a wider range of countries involved pairs is the format.

No doubt, but test cricket is realistically only played by 9 nations (despite Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan allegedly being test nations) and no-one would seriously question that.

1 hour ago, enotian said:

Not sure that the seven team format is ideal other than it churns out about the right number of heats and every team faces each other.

I don't think 7 vs 7 is suitable for the SWC for various reasons, and neither is it the format used by all national leagues. But I do think that a 4TT or 5TT format is a reasonable compromise between having enough competitive teams whilst constituting a proper team competition.

If they want to run a 'best pairs' format in parallel, or as a lower division competition, then that's fair enough.

[enotian]

4 hours ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

No doubt, but test cricket is realistically only played by 9 nations (despite Zimbabwe, Ireland and Afghanistan allegedly being test nations) and no-one would seriously question that.

Agreed nine countries is fine for the SWC. Hosts in the final. Two semis of four teams, winners to the final, 2nd and 3rd to the last chance, the winners of which progress to the four team final. You wouldn't want more than nine. But if you want a more international feel to a world championship event then the pairs allows that. Currently a SWC would only have Australia from outside of Europe.  Admittedly the pairs only adds USA (and maybe Argentina or New Zealand) but if you wanted to develop riders from other nations then only having to develop two is much easier than four.

4 hours ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

I don't think 7 vs 7 is suitable for the SWC for various reasons, and neither is it the format used by all national leagues. But I do think that a 4TT or 5TT format is a reasonable compromise between having enough competitive teams whilst constituting a proper team competition.

I was referring to the seven team format used in the SON, where seven pairs face each other. Might just be me being a bit anal but I like even numbers. Odd when there's only three times during the event when all seven teams have ridden an equal amount of races.

Whilst a World Cup of 7 person teams would be the ultimate genuine article they couldn't even achieve that 50 years ago in the hey day so I don't see it happening anytime soon.  Nobody wants to see a Rest of the World team in a sport with any credibility. There are currently probably six nations who could put out a seven man team which could give any sort of challenge to a full Polish side. Maybe if you restricted the team composition to only two SGP riders at the top and two U-21 riders at reserve you'd even the odds for the other five teams and make it more akin to league speedway but it's hardly in the spirit of elite sport not allowing a nation to select its seven best riders.  Might actually result in a decent competition (if the Russians played ball). You'd still fancy the Poles to win it but the match scores might be closer. No doubt if they did go for it by match three GB would be using Fricke as a guest for the injured Woffinden and R/R for Craig Cook.     

Edited November 13, 2021 by enotian

[Humphrey Appleby]

5 minutes ago, enotian said:

I was referring to the seven team format used in the SON, where seven pairs face each other. Might just be me being a bit anal but I like even numbers. Odd when there's only three times during the event when all seven teams have ridden an equal amount of races.

6 teams would only make for 15 heats and would mean an odd number of qualifiers from 2 semi-finals if you included a host team. 8 teams would need 28 heats, so probably too many for a single meeting.

I suppose you could go for 10 teams which is 45 heats which could be split over a couple of days, but then you wouldn't really have any natural conclusion to the first day.

The World Pairs worked quite well with 9 pairs when it had 6 rider races, but there were few tracks that could safely accommodate the races. 

[enotian]

Yeah, as I said above the seven team format does seem to generate the right number of heats but does that make it the most entertaining format?

I'd prefer 16 counties in a knock out style competition rather than the round robin format.

Fair enough all the countries don't face each other and some are eliminated after only two heats but that's fairly standard for world championships

[Gambo95]

On 11/12/2021 at 11:53 PM, HenryW said:

Delighted to see the U21 rider requirement gone from the tournament.
No disrespect to the guys that raced in that position over the last few years, but it devalued the competition.

I still dislike the "pairs" format compared to a 4 team world championship (2 team test match format would be even better), but can kind of understand the reasoning for moving to this format while there is a lack of depth in most nations.

It'll be interesting to see how well attended these meetings are. 
It feels like the new rights holders are going back over the ground that BSI trod when they first took over (when speedway was healthier in more nations), then bailed out of as they realised that running all meetings in one country led to reduced attendance.

Having said that, I'd still prefer a different format to the suggested 2 semi finals and a final.
The difference between the Nations is too big to make that really interesting racing wise. 
I think I'd prefer a format where there was a qualification ladder through the meetings, but I guess that doesn't work as well as it means more meetings without the BIG names.

Just using the Nations that competed this year and their finishing order, I am thinking of something like this:
Day 1: USA, Russia, Finland, Italy, Slovenia, Ukraine, Czechia
Day 2: France, Latvia, Sweden, Germany + top 3 from Day 1
Day 3: GB, Poland, Denmark, Australia + top 3 from Day 2

It feels like that would give more competitive meetings on each day, but would mean that the BIG nations don't appear until Day 3, so probably doesn't work well for TV contracts despite being better for competitive racing.

I prefer the 2 semi finals with 3 teams joining the hosts (or current champions).

If the Laguta brothers and Emil were to race they would have 2 qualifiers to go through before any final.

They didn't get any favours this year so they were seeded to the final despite being treble winners so I would be against four teams being seeded next year.

[Humphrey Appleby]

On 11/14/2021 at 12:46 PM, enotian said:

I'd prefer 16 counties in a knock out style competition rather than the round robin format.

Yorkshire v Lancashire, Sussex v Kent? 

Think the problem is the same reason why the SGP contracted back to 16 riders - it's got to be affordable for the organisers and paying for 16 teams to be there, with the risk that the host team or Poland goes out early, is not going to fly. Plus, the pairs format is not really conducive to a knockout competition - it's pretty unsatisfactory that you can be knocked out even though one of your riders wins a race.

[enotian]

The hope would be that the jeopardy of elimination for finishing last would alter the mindset and induce team riding. The 4,3,2,0 scoring didn't really do it in the round robin format whereby the leader rarely looked like risking the 4 points even if their opponents were accumulating 5. 

[chunky]

On 11/14/2021 at 6:46 AM, enotian said:

Fair enough all the countries don't face each other and some are eliminated after only two heats but that's fairly standard for world championships

But how many world championships involve teams going home after two minutes of action?

[enotian]

On 11/20/2021 at 5:26 PM, chunky said:

But how many world championships involve teams going home after two minutes of action?

Track Cycling? Martial Arts?

How many teams win a world championship after seven minutes of action? 

Not a fair comparison. If you compare to a team sport where matches last 80-90 minutes the world champs are held over a number of weeks. Relatively speaking, using the football FIFA world cup as an example, your country might get knocked out after three matches (the third may actually be a dead rubber but let's say three) those three matches equate to 5% of the entire tournament time (if all matches last 90 mins). If your country is knocked out of a 27 heat SON after two heats they've appeared in 7% of the entire tournament time.