How do you get an overall score from individual points for rides?

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Monday, 31st July 2023

A few people have asked me about this so I thought I`d rewrite the FAQ with this specifically in mind. I wrote the first FAQ back in November 2018 and it might be worth re-writing them all but this is the one I get asked about the most. 

Every ride I can I give points for the quality of the ride - see the FAQs about how the points are allocated. But we need a way to use the points from rides to create a ranking. Are you only as good as your last ride? How far back are your races valid?

So, we settled on the average of 6 rides to assess your ranking and this is the score shown in the top right hand corner of the rider page. If you ride hill climbs, tts and road bike events you`ll have a score for each, made up only of the rides you have done in each of those disciplines.

TT`s and RB events count for 1 year but HC events are season specific (although I use your past 12 months HC results to give you a category and predicitions).

If you have fewer than 6 events then I do the best I can with what you have. Here`s the basic plan :-

1. result - thats your score and you are "provisional" status
2. results - average of the 2 - still "provisional".
3. results - the middle score counts and now you are "qualified" status.
4. results - the average of the middle 2.
5. results - the average of the middle 3.
6. results - the average of the middle 4.
7. results - the average of the middle 5.
8. results - the average of the middle 6.
9. results and more - the average of the most recent 8, excluding the best and worst of these 8.

After this it goes on in the same way EXCEPT for riders who have more than 8 in the last 4 months. These riders get a "frequent" status. What this means is that all events in the last 4 months could count and of these you get the average of the best 6 excluding the very best. If you had 12 events in the last 4 months, with points of 12,1,11,2,10,3,9,4,8,5,7,6 in that order, (you wish), then you'd get the average of 2,3,4,5,6,7 ie 4.5 rather than the average of 11,2,10,3,9,4 (middle 6 of the most recent 8) ie 6.5 if you werent "frequent".

The difference between "provisional" and "qualified" is just that "provisional" riders dont appear on the main ranking tables (unless you tick the box). This was set to 6 rides before covid but was brought down to 3 and hasn't been pushed back.

Frequent status was to encourage the most prolific riders and to base their predictions more on what they were capable of rather than their average. However in reality it gives an unrealistic prediction compared with non frequent riders and is not currently used in predictions - It does however boost your ranking and "cat". This is why the predictions are not always in "cat" order.

I`m not sure I`d re-invent frequent status if I was starting again, but its in there and gives you something to aim for and will help your "cat" a the end of the season if you enter lots of races. Also some feel I should have kept the fastest result in, but this way it balances the slowest being removed which no one has ever complained about.

I hope all this makes sense. Have a look at the other FAQs too and let me know if there are things about them that arent clear

Road Bike Rankings

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Tuesday, 18th April 2023

In partnership with CTT, Spindata has been updated to accommodate the new road bike category.

We now have a separate road bike ranking. Rides from any solo time trial tagged as being on a road bike will be processed together, and the rankings and predictions will be based on the performance of the riders in this category alone. The old ranking for TT bikes will now be exclusively for TT rides so road bike rides won’t appear there.

Both ranking systems will run in the same way they always did. However, it will take time for the available data from road bike rides to build up. So for the transition, if there is little road bike data about an event or the ranking of the riders in it and I can borrow from the TT ranking to complete the scores or predictions I will. 

For this reason it is likely that there will be more variability in the scores and predictions than is usually seen in the TT rankings.

The number of riders active in TT, hill climb and road bike disciplines is variable and not equal. The rankings for each will be based on a scale of about 9000 riders, so the scores will be comparable across disciplines. This is a change for hill climb riders who have previously had scores under 2000. Don’t be alarmed if you notice significant score inflation. The cat system (A1-E20) will not be affected.

It will be perfectly possible to have 3 rankings within Spindata, one for each discipline, simply by riding on a TT bike, on a road bike and in hill climb events, and there will be no crossover between your performance in each.