New Class for US Nationals

It is the the Limited Handicap Range that makes Club Class work so well. By opening up the range you dilute the benefits you are hopefully trying to capture - good, fairer handicapped racing.

This is exactly why we split sports class, with typically 30-40
entries in two. It gives smaller handicap racing, and allows for a
better race. You're welcome.

As soon as we get 60 entries, with a viable low-performace group, we
can split it up into three.

I mean, really, why not have even purer racing with a handicap range
of 0.939-0.941? Answer, because there are not enough entries.
Handicapped racing is always about realistically carving up the
available entries into groups, large enough to make a good race, small
enough to make a fair and enjoyable race not too dependent on luck of
weather, tasking, and handicap.

You're forgetting that "good, fairer racing" also depends on numbers.
8 guys in a narrow class is not as good a race as 25 in a very
slightly broader class. One of the big lessons of our team self-
examination process is that Europeans fly contests with 50 gliders and
10 world level pilots in them. 8 with 1 is not a substitute 12 gliders
is a rock bottom. Really, a successful world-level-preparation race
needs 30 gliders to be considered successful. Yes, that makes it a lot
harder to win. That's the point.

No other class says "you may not fly your glider in this race. Go
home" You are allowed to fly a ventus1 asw20, or discus LS4, or even a
1-26 if you're so inclined in 15 meter class. That's why both halves
of sports have open bottom ends.

The currently proposed conception of Club Class has not been tailored to aim at getting these ships into the competition scene.

This is absolutely false. The RC's number one concern, and the number
one guiding principle in all our club class discussion has been how to
increase participation. You may rightly accuse us of not paying enough
attention to preparing the team for WGC, because we're too interested
in participation. But not that we're insufficiently focused on
participation!

We're talking about nationals. Next year. To go to nationals, you have
to participate in regionals and get on the ranking list. To get good
enough for nationals you have to participate in regionals. We looked
hard at the numbers. Go look at my Soaring article. The numbers are
just not there yet.

That's why we've been having club class regionals and super regionals
for several years now. And we can have as many as anyone wants to
schedule and show up for, with nothing but cheering from RC. To have a
successful class at the national level, you have to have a successful
class at the regional level. If people won't show up for any contest
that does not give US team points, frankly, they're never going to get
good enough to belong on that team.

You're making the usual "build it and they will come" argument, that
somehow declaring a much narrower nationals class will magically make
gliders appear that do not appear at super regionals, do not come to
sports nationals, and aren't even on the seeding list so they can't
appear. We're not talking about 3 or 4, to make this viable you have
to double the numbers that show up at sports nationals in "club"
gliders.

There is a bit of burned once, twice shy here. Club advocates said,
"restrict team selection to club gliders, then lots will show up, and
all the FAI guys will borrow a club glider to go to nationals." It
didn't work. Club advocates said, "restrict team selection to people
who haven't been to WGC before, so the little guy feels he has a
chance. That will double the numbers." It didn't work. Club advocates
said "tasking must ignore gliders below 1.0 handicap so we can have
real races, that will bring them all out." It didn't work. World class
advocates at IGC said "build a simple cheap one design glider so you
can have the "purest" race possible, and they'll line up for it" It
didn't work.

The path we have followed with club class is designed to build
participation without going out on a cliff that falls to pieces if the
theory is wrong again. We start with strong encouragement for
regional and super regional competitions, where you can experiment
with handicap ranges, rules tweaks, etc., find out what works in the
US, with our base of pilots and gliders. Build a base. That has been
successful, though the 10-12 gliders that show up were a good deal
below the forecasts. Anyway, kudos to those who worked hard on it. We
included lots of above sweeteners for club within sports nationals.
Now it has grown to the point that we can split sports nationals in
two, but keeping the upper limit where it was all along in the US
(V1/20ABC). You have everything you want, you just have to let a few
1-34s play along. The idea "20 gliders are waiting to come to
nationals, as soon as you write a rule that the 1-34 can't come
pollute our contest" is just silly.

This is realistic and responsible. Just pounding for "pure club class
now" -- and damn the torpedoes we all go home if not enough show up --
is not. Get 30 "club" gliders to show up at Mifflin, figure out where
the low performance gliders can go, and we can start talking about
next steps.

John Cochrane