- From: Duje Bonacci <duje@trackmeetings.info>
- Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 15:28:43 +0100
- To: public-opentrack@w3.org
I had the same issue about year and a half ago when I started developing
the data model for TrackMeetings.Info database.
My current "internal" working terminology is as follows, which I tried
to develop so that it is applicable in any sport, starting at the lowest
level of classification, is
1. attempt - a single attempt by one of the competitors, e.g. one throw
of javelin, one 800m run by a single athlete or one 4x100m relay run by
a team of four athletes. It is fully described by the id of the
competitor(s) involved, the round of the competition (superior category,
to be described
*** pseudolevel: EVENT ***
This is not a sporting, but rather branding/marketing level category. It
refers to an intentionally organized and planned (more or less strictly)
spatio-temporaly bounded (i.e. "in London from 15.-18.09.2021) gathering
of athletes and officials in any (or even multitude of) sport(s) in
order for them to participate in a _competition_ (which is the second
level of the scale, see below).
Hence defined, neatly aligns with Andy's point on "an event meaning
everything both in sport and technology", as it indeed does refer to
_any_ sort of gathering, for whatever reason.
Examples of events would be Olympic games, Football world cup, a season
of Formula 1 or a local athletics meeting. Or World trade fair or Bon
Jovi concert. :) So it needs not be a gathering of sportsmen at all, but
of any physical persons. However, as we are interested in sporting
events, we will implicitly understand and "event" as a "sporting event".
An (sporting, or any other) event can itself be composed of (sub)events
(e.g. Olympics have number of different events in it such as Olympics in
athletics, Olympics in swimming etc., Olympic football tournament etc)
and where you will draw the line depends only on how you want to brand
and market each of these in order to attract athletes to participate in
them, audience to attend/follow them and sponsors to support/fund your
effort as an organizer of them.
*** level 2.1: COMPETITION ***
This is first level which is fully sports-related category. It refers to
set of _matches_ (can be a single one or many, see below), executed in a
number of _rounds_ (likewise, can be a single one or many, see below)
among a number of _competitors_, according to strictly proscribed
"competition" rules.
The rules determine:
- what competitors can, must or cannot/must not do in each match (the
proscribed rules of the sport in question)
- how a ranking of competitors is done depending on the outcome of their
performance in the match (i.e. who won, who lost or came second, third
etc.),
- how competitors progress from each round to the next (these are higher
level rules related to the organization of the competition itself,
rather than the rules of the sport in question, that e.g. define the
difference between a championhips and cup competitions)
- how the overall final classification of the whole competition is
determined (i.e. who won, who came second, who came third - hence
getting the medals etc.)
Each competition always has a single winner. So eg. only one athlete
wins the highjump competition in the European indoor athletics
championships in Chorzow, or only one team wins the FIFA World Cup, or
one athlete wins the 100m race in a small regional meeting in Croatia.
Note that every competition is, by its nature, also an event (a
gathering of people), so this is where the terminological confusion that
Andy pointed at arises from. But not every event is a competition.
A competition is fully characterized by:
- sport/discipline (e.g. football, 100m, giant slalom, ...)
- age (all competitors in one competition must compete at par i.e. are
ranked at the end of the competition on the same ranking list, if not,
there are actually more than one competition in question - e.g. if you
have a 1500m race with junior and senior athletes running together, but
being ranked separately, you actually have two separate competitions,
"sharing" the same track and timing equipment.)
- gender (except in cases where a sport/discipline is uni- or
multi-gender such as (i think) curling or 4x200m mixed relays. Similarly
as with age, there can be cases when for organizational reasons men and
women compete alongside each other - e.g. in road running -, but in
majority of such cases it is two - or more - different competitions
going on alongside each other)
- possible prop characteristics of the discipline in question (e.g.
weight of the shot in shotput or height of a hurdle in 400mH race),
which for the same reasons as above has to be the same for all participants
With respect to athletics, additional parameters that can be useful and
practical for characterizing a competition is the WA category. So as I
hinted previously, WA classification does not classify events (in this
terminology) but competitions (in this terminology).
*** level 2.2: ROUND ***
Qualifications (e.g. matches in the FIFA World Cup cycle played in order
to qualify for the FIFA WC Finals) Preliminaries, 1/8 finals, 1/4 finals
etc. until finals. Their context ("importance", "significance") is
determined by the competition rules for the competition they are a
"round" of.
Rounds serve two purposes, one sporting and one marketing:
- sporting purpose is to filter out the competitors who will compete in
finals, as for many competitions it would be impossible to have
everybody interested compete in the finals (e.g. in the Olympics).
However, for smaller competitions (e.g. a single athletics meeting) you
often don't need rounds as you can fit e.g. all the triplejumpers in one
single round and declare the winner of the whole competition the athlete
who wins that single round. Hence, a round and a competition can in some
(even many) case be the same thing, that is why I put them both at level
2 and differentiated them by an additional sub-index.
- marketing purpose of rounds is that they enable the organizer of the
_event_ (which is brand thing, compared to the related competition,
which is a written rule-following thing) to develop the competition as a
series of suspense-increasing steps. Each round brings winners and
loosers, each round has "better" competitors in it than the last one, at
the start of each round the playing field is leveled for all
participants so surprises are possible. Skillful use of this principle
enables organizers can use this to attract audience and sponsors.
And of course, a round - as a gathering of physical persons - is always
also by itself an event... :)
*** level 1: MATCH ***
A match is a single direct "confrontation" of two or more athletes (in
athletics it can even be of a single athlete, e.g. a 110H race with only
one athlete - and the timing equipment) or teams, governed by the rules
of the respective sport which are monitored by the relevant and
appropriately accredited officials. So a single marathon race would be a
match, as would be a 1/8 finals of the FIFA WC in football between
England and Brazil, as would be a single race of F1 (e.g. in Monza
2021), as is a pole vault competition (which in this terminology would
simultaneously also be a match and a round - or a single-match
single-round competition to be fully specific) in Serbian Indoor meeting
2021 held in Belgrade some days ago.
A match is always characterized by:
- precise geographical location of the match
- precise (local) start time of the match
- competitors who are to participate
- competitors who withdraw before start or did not start or were
disqualified before the end of the match for some reason according to
the rules of the sport in question
- competitors who did participate and who are at the end of the match
ranked from first (winner) downwards
- a results of the match, in terms of a numerical parameter indicating
the scores the participants achieved in the match
*** level 0: ATTEMPT ***
Whereas competition, round and match apply to all sports, attempt is a
category that applies only in some of them. Hence zero for this level.
Attempt can be regarded as the "confrontation" of an individual athlete
with the measuring equipment by which the "result" of the athlete's
performance is determined.
So in sports where you don't have measuring equipment but the
"performance" is measured by the "supremacy" you display over your
direct opponent, you don't have attempts (e.g. in all direct adversary
sports like all ball games, fighting sports etc.). On the other hand,
athletics is all an attempt sport. Even a 100m race, where competitors
in a single match race alongside each other and start at the same time,
their success is determined by the autonomous timing machine positioned
at the finish line rather by anything done by other athletes in the same
match. A 100m competition could easily and legally be organized in such
a way that each athlete runs alone, but it would be boring for athletes
and spectators and inconvenient for the organizers.
Each attempt is characterized by:
- the formal acceptance of the performance according to the rules of
sport (e.g. fail in long jump or clearance in high jump, or false start
in 200m or DNF in half marathon), and
- the numeric measure of the athletes performance,
- possible additional parameters that can impact on the validity of the
athletes performance, like wind speed
******************
Huh... :) sorry for the elaboration, but I really believe it will be
useful in disentangling the terminology, which is as you all know
extremely important when trying to work with data.
duje
05. 03. 2021. u 13:15, Andy Robinson je napisao/la:
> Hi all. It really "does my head in" using the word Event to mean
> everything (both in sport and in technology!). I know everybody does
> it, but 3 years ago we tried to adopt the terminology below:
>
> Competition: European Championships, XXX Open Meeting etc. This
> would have a World Ranking Category
> Event: Shot put, 800m etc. This would have an opentrack event_code,
> and (usually) restrictions on gender and age
>
> - Andy
>
> On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 16:33, Martin Alvarez Espinar
> <martin.alvarez.espinar@huawei.com> wrote:
>> Hi Duje,
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> Do you mean the classification OW, GL, DL, A, B, C, D..., right? [1]
>>
>> In this case, I think this classification would apply to the type of the event as the competition as a whole:
>> For instance: European Athletics Indoor Championships 2021 in Torun
>> - is an 'A' event
>> - that has several sub-events (sub-competitions: 60, 60H, 3000, etc. <- here we use the list of disciplines)
>>
>> Happy to create this new taxonomy based on the existing official data. We can follow the same approach, so everyone could contribute in the future.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> [1] https://www.worldathletics.org/world-ranking-rules/basics
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Duje Bonacci [mailto:duje@trackmeetings.info]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 4, 2021 3:50 PM
>> To: public-opentrack@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: Common database for type of events (with ids)
>>
>> Hi all!
>>
>> Martin, thanx for the initiative, I would be happy to join in on this!
>>
>> Also, having in mind that two years ago WA introduced competition rank categories, and I found that there it should be extended somewhat with
>> 3-4 additional items so that all events can be functionally classified, would id be possible to open a document for that as well?
>>
>> duje
>>
>> 04. 03. 2021. u 13:41, Martin Alvarez Espinar je napisao/la:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> During the last meeting we discussed about the possibility of having a common list of disciplines. This is one of the outcomes we can propose to the rest of the world.
>>>
>>> In 2018, we did the exercise of analyzing a high level both a taxonomy and a model to define those disciplines [1]. This model should serve to describe *any* kind of athletics event, including those that are not depending on an official governing body.
>>>
>>> As you can observe, there are several common attributes:
>>> - type of event (e.g., Race)
>>> - subtype of event (e.g., Hurdles)
>>> - venue type (e.g., indoor, outdoor, road,...)
>>> - + specific attributes (e.g., height of hurdles)
>>>
>>> Apart from the model, we should create a list with the common types of events (with common identifiers), at least with the official ones. Time ago, I created a first list with the main event recognized by the IAAF rules book. See this early proposal at [2]. If you like the idea, we can collectively maintain this database within the GitHub repository. So everyone could propose changes. This could also serve to keep an update map of different identifiers from different systems. Also, we will be able to generate the complementary machine-readable representation of that information.
>>>
>>> Suggestions are welcome. If you like this idea, I'll push the document into the main repository and change the styles.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> [1]
>>> https://w3c.github.io/opentrack-cg/spec/competition/#sports-discipline
>>> [2] https://espinr.github.io/opentrack-cg/spec/disciplines/
>>>
>>>
>>> Martin Alvarez-Espinar
>>> HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO.,LTD.
>>> European Research Institute
>>> Huawei Technologies R&D Belgium NV
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>>> martin.alvarez.espinar@huawei.com
>>>
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>> --
>> ***********************************
>> Duje Bonacci, MSc
>> IAAF Athletes' Representative authorized by CAF/HAS
>> E: duje@trackmeetings.info
>> T: 00385 98 469761
>> https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/athlete-representatives/directory/duje-bonacci-398413
>> ***********************************
>>
>>
>
--
***********************************
Duje Bonacci, MSc
IAAF Athletes' Representative authorized by CAF/HAS
E: duje@trackmeetings.info
T: 00385 98 469761
https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/athlete-representatives/directory/duje-bonacci-398413
***********************************
Received on Friday, 5 March 2021 14:29:04 UTC