World Tour format: why not 4 instead of just 3 participants per country?

The numbers in this analysis are based on the simulations available in this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GLBldwzowIaac2oE3a240eYmAi2vVAw6oNXk7DcY0tg/edit?usp=sharing (best viewed on desktop)

In the previous post, differences between the World Cups and the World Tours were pointed out. Unfortunately the number of skaters per country is limited to just 3 riders. Moreover, the Crystal Globe will count up to 15 results towards this classification. The total number of races one can participate in is only 18, so the this will push the best skaters to really participate in as many distances as they can.

That will be felt by the subtop athletes, the rising talents. They will simply not get much opportunities to compete individually… Common sense reasons that this eventually will halt the development of future athletes and drop the overall level of short track speed skating. An athlete that is not challenged at the highest level will eventually drop out.

A solution that leaves a bit more room for development to future stars of the sport is to allow 4 instead of 3 athletes per country start per distance. The rumour goes that this would not fit into the program of a 3-day World Tour. But is that really the case? In this article we will look at the numbers that would have to support such decision. SPOILER ALERT: it does not. In the remainder of this article, I will show that the 4-athlete-proposal would actually not require that many extra races at all compared to the World Cup format of the passed seasons.

World Cup races

Let us first take a look at World Cups of the past season, specifically the first one to have an idea of what we are dealing with here. The total number of individual races for Men was 106. Moreover, 220 individual male starting places where filled (110 unique participants). In the table below, you can see how the Men’s races were divided. We can do the exact same thing for the Women, but for the sake of simplicity, I will limit the analysis to the Men as the point to be made is the same for both categories. I will, however, discuss the total numbers in the conclusion of this article.

	1500m	1000m(1)	1000m(2)	500m	Total
Number of competitors	56	54	52	58	220
Number of races Friday	8	9	9	19	45
Number of races Saturday morning	8	8	0	0	16
Number of races Saturday afternoon	5	8	0	0	13
Number of races Sunday morning	0	0	7	9	16
Number of races Sunday afternoon	0	0	8	8	16
Total number of races	21	25	24	36	106

World Tour races

So what about the World Tour races? When limiting the number of participants to 3 per country with only 3 distances, you will end up with only 96 races. That means about 10% fewer races compared to last year’s World Cup. And only 213 starting positions, which is about 3% less than on a last year’s World Cup. However, in the worst case, when only the top skaters for all countries start, that would only be 71 different athletes, compared to 110 last season (-35.5%). For countries that usually have a full team of 6 skaters, only 3 skaters might be skating now, which is a reduction of 50%.

So what happens when we add the 4th skater per country? Bare in mind that in that case two additional rules will take effect:

• For each distance, the 20 highest ranked Skaters from the World Tour Classification of the distance that are entered will be prequalified directly for the Heats of the 500m and 1000m and for the Quarter-Finals in the 1500m.
• The maximum number of Competitors to enter the Repechage Session is forty (40) for the 500m and 1000m and forty-two (42) for the 1500m, based on the intermediary Distance Classifications

Moreover, the number of countries having a fourth male skater present was only 16 on average during the last season (and maximum 19), so let us work with 20 extra male skaters per distance to leave some extra room.

In that case the table with number of races and participants in case of max 4 male athletes per country per distance becomes the following:

	1000m	1500m	500m	Total
Number of competitors	87	87	87	261
Number of races Friday	19	14	21	54
Number of races Saturday morning	10	0	0	10
Number of races Saturday afternoon	8	0	0	8
Number of races Sunday morning	0	8	10	18
Number of races Sunday afternoon	0	5	8	13
Total number of races	37	27	39	103

So these are 3 fewer races compared to World Cup in the past season for the Men. A minimum of 87 individual athletes would get the chance to participate. That is still 21.0% less than in the previous World Cup format but that clearly is the route the ISU has chosen.

Conclusion

Compared to the previous World Cup format, the World Tour could allow for a maximum of 4 skaters to participate individually on each distance within the 3-day time frame. In the current simulation based on the realistic numbers from last year’s World Cups, we find that it is possible to run the World Tour format with about the same number of races while having a maximum of 4 participants per country.

	World Cup			World Tour
	Men	Women	Total	Men	Women	Total
Number of races Friday	45	29	74	54	36	90
Number of races Saturday morning	16	8	10	16	26	28
Number of races Saturday afternoon	13	13	26	8	13	21
Number of races Sunday morning	16	9	25	18	10	28
Number of races Sunday afternoon	16	16	32	13	8	21
Total number of races	106	75	181	103	83	186

We see a decrease in the number of races on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, as expected since there are only 6 individual distances instead of 8. There is an increase in number of races on Friday and in the repechage sessions. It will add about 1 hour to the Friday program. However, that is a chance the ISU should be willing to take to further support the talent of tomorrow!