david_rosen wrote:The most obvious miscarriage of justice can be seen comparing Axel and Ted.
The main problem is that Axel only got a 1 point advantage over Ted for his 6:40 minute lead on Day 3, but Ted got a 6 point advantage over Axel with his 2:56 lead on Day 4.
For me this example is exactly what the debate is about - whether this matters and therefore whether David is right to consider it a miscarriage of justice.
Is the Scottish made up of six individual races and an overall result which is the outcome of how well you have RACED relative to others in your class over a succession of races? Or is position on any one day totally irrelevant and it is one single competition with an overall result which is the outcome of how you have PERFORMED over the week?
Another example is that Axel beat Ted by one place and 6:40mins on Day 3, Ted beat Axel by one place and 0:55mins on Day 6. If the overall outcome is about racing then these two cancel one another out, if it is about relative performance across multiple days then Axel would have the edge.
For me what David quotes is not a miscarriage of justice, it is just an outcome of a scoring system which was published before the competition. It is also a scoring system that meant both Ted and Axel will have been able to see what was needed on Day 6 in order to finish ahead of one another (eg Axel had to finish no lower than 7th and no more than one place behind Ted).
It is not that one system is right and one is wrong, they are just different and each has pros and cons. One of the pros of the new system is ease of calculation and competitor understanding. Running hard down the run-in and gaining a place or two is much more worthwhile under the new system than the old system - whether that is a pro or a con is back to the question of whether positions on individual days have any relevance at all....