Equitable Awards
This discussion has an associated proposal. View Proposal Details here.Comments about this discussion:
Started
1C.8 Awards
The requirements for what awards are given are very loose and that is understandable given the considerable cost of awards. However, I think it's important to have some stipulations in place so that there is equity in the awards given. I believe that standard and unlimited races should receive the same level of awards as well as male and female competitors. Perhaps there are other things that are important to be equitable? People can add in. Do we need to say that all champions must receive the same types of awards? In general the hosts are fair people but I think it's important for this to be required.
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I'm a firm believer in not placing too many restrictions on event hosts. From an "eco-friendly" wooden medal, to a clear acrylic medal, to black berets, to a generic IUF-logo medal (for every event at Unicon II) to ridiculous, heavy trophies, the organization paying, and taking on the financial risk, should have the final decision.
But the idea of equitable has merit. If there is one type of award to be used for overall champions (Expert or Finals), hosts should strive for those to be consistent across all events. Then possibly another type for age group winners, and possibly yet another type for group or team events where there might be lots of riders in the winning team or group.
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"I'm a firm believe in not placing too many [...] should have the final decision"
That is not at all what Patricia said. The equity is in what is given to champions in comparison to other champions, period. Not what kind of medal is being given form the organizers to the champions, that is of course to the discretion of the organizers.
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In my opinion all winners of the 1st 2nd and 3rd place should receive a medal (gold, silver, bronze) and Expert and Junior Experts a cup (in three different sizes)
That would be for freestyle. In all other competitions, where the competitors receive a "'World champion" title the winners should receive cups also.
The medals and cups are not really expensive if you don't pick really spezial cups.
Besides that in my opinion it is very sad, that all other competitors 4th, 5th place do not even receive a certificate stating the place he or she received which they can take home.
It is a World Championship!
We always print the certificates in advance (after registration it is known how many are reqired and you order some more for misprints), At the competition we only print the name and place in the certificat. So the only thing you need is a printer and black ink, also not expensiv.
For races we print for each competitor one certificat stating all his/her results of all races, he or she participated in. Otherwise it is to much work.
Competitors pay a lot of money for a UNICON and do not even receive a pice of paper to take home. I do think thats what every competitor deserves.
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I absolutely agree with Patricia's original post.
- If there are Standard and Unlimited versions of a race, both sets of winners worked equally hard and awards should match.
- Female awards should be same or equivalent to male. I added "equivalent" to allow for design variations, which could be a girl vs. boy on a trophy, different colors, or other possible differences that may be used as long as both awards are essentially equal.
- I'd like to add that the top awards, whatever they may be, should be consistent, like the Olympics. The World Champions of the 50m One Foot race (male/female) should receive the same (or equivalent) type of award as the winners of a 100k race, if held, Pairs Freestyle, Hockey, etc. On this point I think of medals, or the medal-equivalent.
- The above point does not prevent hosts (or sponsors) from adding additional awards, such as berets, trophies, free samples, cars, etc.
Pointless background info:
At my very first unicycle convention (Kokomo, Indiana, 1980) I won the "Individual Trick Riding, Chain Drive" even in the "adults" age group. For this I received two trophies. One was a handmade, balancing unicyclist sculpture made by the host, Tom Miller. The second was a trophy from the Japan Unicycle Association that had a little statue of a unicyclist on top of a pedestal. Both are very cool. I think the JUA provided the trophies unexpectedly; nobody complained. Tom Miller's handmade trophies came in different variations for the different events. Pairs awards had a single wooden base with two unicyclists, that could be split apart for each rider. There was a Basketball trophy that had an array of riders and a basketball, and a magnificent Parade trophy with lots of tall unicycles on it. Whatever we put in this section of the Rulebook it must not discourage this type of imagination or creativity.
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Also I sympathize with Kirsten on the "3-place limit" we have traditionally used at Unicon. We were using the Olympics as our model. But with computers handling all rider data, it gives me the idea of various ways to do awards that would be "almost free". While any type of paper awards can be printed during the convention, templates could be developed to do a "pretty" version of a competitor's complete results, or even just complete listing of events where the rider participated.
After the fact, you could even do "print-at-home" awards. They would not have the nice stationery that might be provided during the convention, but could be any variation of a certificate riders could do later. These could even be pre-filled by the convention software and sent as attachments to the email addresses of competitors, or automatically created if competitors requested them later.
Lots of variations are possible. I think it would be nice, especially at these large competitions, for each competitor to receive something, as she suggested, that is a personal memento of their participation. And I'll that if we do this, there should also be a version (or versions) for all the volunteers who make these things work!
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I agree to the kind of equity that Patricia suggested, and John elaborated.
- Specifically, I agree that male and female should have equivalent awards for the same ranking in the same event. (By "event" I mean e.g. 10k race.)
- Ditto for Standard and Unlimited.
- Equivalency between events: not sure. I leave the possibility open that a 100 km race winner gets a bigger award than a 10k winner. Or the other way round, this is an example.
As to Kirsten's post: I'm in favour of including a rule that per event at least rankings 1, 2 and 3 in each age group, as well as at least rankings 1, 2 and 3 of a final receive a tangible award.
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A printout would be nice for every competitor for what place they got in everything they entered. I know this has been done in the past at different competitions...guessing it's a lot of extra work but might be worth it as it's relatively cheap...even a link to a printable sheet would be better than nothing. I don't think we need ribbons for 5th or 6th as that would add a ton of extra time and cost to the organizers but of course they are free to add them with the current rules.
I do wish there was a standard for the medals...that they should actually be made of metal. I know some people might like the unique plastic or wood medals but to me they seem cheap and not what a world champion medal should be made of. I would be embarrassed to show someone a Unicon 18 medal as in my humble opinion they would laugh and think it's fake.
And I do agree with the original post that equity should be given to champions in comparison to other champions.
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A printout is a lot of paper to be used and so many people really don't care about it. For those who do, perhaps it could be available as a PDF online and people could print it out on their own if they wanted it.
I agree with Jamey's point about the caliber of the awards but don't feel comfortable stipulating metal. We have to remember that a lot of work was done to make this rule book useable to small competitions as well as Unicon. I would be okay with a recommendation in the rulebook along the lines of " At Unicon, awards should be of a professional and high quality nature and should reflect the caliber of the event."
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As for back to the intent of this post, equality:
I agree with Klaus's first two points but think that the third is stepping into a really messy area. If a person wins a world champion title in an event, they should receive the same caliber of award as another world champion. It doesn't have to be identical, I can imagine cool trophies that have different designs for different disciplines but the same body.
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Regarding printouts: In our Dutch Nationals we email every participant a few weeks after the event a "pretty" pdf file with their name, and all the competitions they entered with results (mostly times) and rankings. Our competition software generates these pdf's. It is quite a bit of work (photo background etc), but doesn't cost any money and no paper is wasted. Only those who want it, can print it out for themselves.
Price of medals: let me refer to Dutch Nationals again. Our 75 medals for this year were solid metal, coloured bronze, silver and gold. In my opinion, they were nicer than the Unicon medals. Including neck ribbon in national colours and pre-ordered sticker on the back to state event, age group and position, they cost us 63 euro. That's US$ 70 at the current rate. I don't think that is expensive.
Equality of awards between events: Patricia thinks we enter a messy area if we allow different calibre. And she might be right; I would not oppose against prescribing equal calibre. But to me this isn't quite as evident as equality between sexes and between standard vs unlimited. That's why I wrote "not sure".
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Just to compare: for NAUCC 2014 we spent $3023 on awards and for NAUCC 2015 we spent $3470. We had lots of awards, similar to the number given out at Unicon because we do all of the same events, but Unicon has more age groups. So while awards might not be a big budget item at some events, they are at others. All the more reason to give hosts discretion about what they give. That's why I am in favor of a Unicon-specific stipulation.
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I still think it should be stated that medals need to be metal at Unicons (not mandatory at smaller events). Even if they cost $5,000 this is what people train for for 2 years to get and it is a world championship. Don't know exact numbers for this past Unicon but guessing they took in close to $500,000 in registration fees so $5,000 in awards would only be 1% of the budget. I apologize if my guesses are wrong and to go off topic. Maybe this needs a new thread.
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I like the idea of the pdf file that every competitor can download after Unicon that states all of his/her results.
Regarding the awards, I like Kirsten's idea of the same award for 1-3 in age group and a different award for 1-3 expert/junior expert. It is a big difference if you are a winnter of an age group or World Champion! I also think it would be nice if all members of a team would receive an award and not just get one award for the whole team.
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@Klaas: "I leave the possibility open that a 100 km race winner gets a bigger award than a 10k winner. Or the other way round, this is an example."
In as far as we are talking about award requirements, I'm not a fan of that one. For example, the 10k winner bested every other rider, just as the 100k winner did. In reality, the 10k probably had more competitors as well. Same applies to the winner of the 0.03k Wheel Walk. :-)
@Klaas: "I'm in favour of including a rule that per event at least rankings 1, 2 and 3 in each age group, as well as at least rankings 1, 2 and 3 of a final receive a tangible award."
If we are to impose requirements on awards, I would start with exactly such a rule.
@Jamey: "I would be embarrassed to show someone a Unicon 18 medal as in my humble opinion they would laugh and think it's fake."
They would absolutely not think it was fake. If you were trying to fool someone, surely you would show them something that really looked like a sports medal?
I think the wooden medals are cool, in their own way. Very eco-friendly. Keep away from fire and they'll be fine. :-) Okay, that's not nice. But here's the thing. What do you do with all these awards after you get home? I usually keep one out for a while, to show people as a souvenir of the event. Then it goes into a box with the rest of them, never to see the light of day again. The trinket that is given to you isn't the award. The DEED is the award. Early Olympians were awarded a wreath of {insert appropriate plan name here}. Their reward was the honor of their victory. I will treasure my wooden medals, as I will probably never get anything like them again. They are unique. And my acrylic medals from Unicon XV and my godawfully heavy Unicon IV trophies that seemed to have used fireproof doors as their base.
If we do decide to make requirements for awards, at Unicon only, after the 1, 2, 3 thing above, I think it would be okay to specify something like "medals, that are made of metal or otherwise appear metallic or to be made of a precious material. Polished rock, platinum, Swarovski crystal, etc.
@Klaas: "In our Dutch Nationals we email every participant a few weeks after the event a "pretty" pdf file with their name, and all the competitions they entered with results (mostly times) and rankings."
I like this idea as the only cost involved is the time to create the template, and to devise the programming to email each competitor's results, in that format, to the address they supplied when registering. It could be made in color, with IUF and/or convention logos, etc. and a nice design to make it look like a certificate and hopefully not like something that was simply printed at home. All of that information will not likely fit on a single page, so it might work better if broken down by category, such as Track, Muni, Urban, etc. Or even simpler, to output a separate one for each event in which the rider received placement.
@Klaas again: "Including neck ribbon in national colours and pre-ordered sticker on the back to state event, age group and position, they cost us 63 euro."
You got 75 medals made out of metal for 63 euro? That sounds like a hell of a deal. Can you share with us a link to the vendor? I think we Americans are getting ripped off! :-)
@Marie S: "I also think it would be nice if all members of a team would receive an award and not just get one award for the whole team."
Yes. If we impose any restrictions, I believe we should start by using the Olympics as our model. This would not prevent trophies or other big prizes for team events, but would require that every rider receives a medal (or award) regardless of number of riders in an event.
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In the Dutch Nationals we have only 7 competitions (in 1 day). So all results for a single rider fit onto one A4 sheet of paper. And they are so pretty that we indeed call them certificates :-)
This is the link from where we got those medals: http://www.stevenssport.be/188-medailles
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(Oh I thought this would be automatically converted to a link.)
Retry: http://www.stevenssport.be/188-medailles
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Medals are really not expensive. Our medals are also less than 1 Euro.
http://www.medaillen.de/produktgruppe.cfm?warengruppe=Medaillen&produktgruppe=Medaillen_bis_50_mm
Nice certificates on thicker paper handed out at the ceremony it's much nicer than, print yourself your certificates at home.
Its not just the paper - it's the way you get the paper.
For me it is a huge difference.
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I think that you're right, Kirsten. However, award ceremonies already take a long time...
Therefore, I think it should be optional to give 1-3 certificates during the award ceremony but I think it's impossible to have everyone receiving their certificates in an award ceremony.
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Printing certificates during UNICON might not be that hard, but distribution is much harder. Not everyone shows up to the awards ceremonies, and Marie is right, the ceremonies go on long enough as is. A printable version for the participant to print after the event is a great idea. It would be nice if this was a UNICON requirement. Discussion for another thread?
To the point about equitable awards:
At the overall/expert level, I believe Patrica is on point: "If a person wins a world champion title in an event, they should receive the same caliber of award as another world champion." A world champion is a world champion and deserves a world champion trophy.
For John's point: "Female awards should be same or equivalent to male. I added "equivalent" to allow for design variations, which could be a girl vs. boy on a trophy, different colors, or other possible differences that may be used as long as both awards are essentially equal." ... let's not get too crazy. Design variations of the sex represented on the trophy is a nice idea, I wouldn't want a representation of a man when I won as woman, but more variation in color, etc, gets tricky quick. Again Patricia nailed it with "It doesn't have to be identical, I can imagine cool trophies that have different designs for different disciplines but the same body." So focus most on the discipline it's being awarded for, don't go further.
UNICON 16 had great overall/expert awards. They were exactly the same. Trophy enough (heavy and represented the caliber of the event), equal across the board (events and sex exactly the same), and had the logo from the event.
From the awards I've managed and from the stand point of passing them out, it boils down to three types/styles to manage:
- overall/expert/jr. expert
- age groups
- team/group
In my opinion, awards should be equitable for each type.
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"1.overall/expert/jr. expert
2.age groups
3.team/group
In my opinion, awards should be equitable for each type. "
You mean awards should be equitable inside each of the three groups?
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Yes
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Good discussion but it needs to be define also what kind of competitons are covered by this rule. Several comments are focused just on Unicon while the rulebook counts in general for every competition.
About the Certification, this should be very easy as the Registration System we use now for most competitions has this already included, it just needs a more nice Layout maybe but it already list every event with any placement and time / point for every rider.
ABout Medails / Cups, I'm not a big fan over handing out millions of those cheap Medails just to hand them out. My Daughter ride serious for many years and so she has a big box full of those cheap Medails and cups and she never liked them as many of them (mostly in Age Groups) was given for become second out of three of first out of 4 or third out of 3... To get sooooo many of those Medails lead to to don't care about them just a little bit. There are only a view Medails / CUps she realy like as they was handed out for doing something realy good like National Champion / winning big Downhill race...
Another point we often see is nearly similar treatment of Age Groups and Finalist / Experts which is a stange behaviour. It becomes better over the last year but still not perfect. Finalst / Expert awards should be on main Focus at leat for Nationals / continentals / Unicon and for Big international events. Age Groups awards should be seperate and less hyped. They earn their awards but to have them mixed with Finalist / experts without making any difference is not fair to them from my opinion.
Beside all this a clear recomendation for a structure of doing awards ist for sure very helpfull as its so different on any competition .
For events up from Nationals or simmilar big / important
- Certification option online for all participants
- Medails for 1st, 2nd, 3rd per Age Group / Gender podium
- Cups / Trophy for 1st, 2nd, 3rd per Finalist / expert / Gender podium
For smaler events Certifications for all participants and Medails for the finalist / Experts are maybe enough, the Age Grous podiums can get the Certifications in a podium Ceremony
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I think We can all agree that no competition is superior to any other when it comes to UNICON. Setting a standard award requirement for "overall/expert" 1st, 2nd, 3rd male and female is a good idea. As per Patricia's example, Standard and Unlimited races are different disciplines and should both get the same equivalent 1/2/3 place medals.
I Think the printable certificates are a good idea. I don't think anyone is going to be against that. But i think we should try to break down the main focus here.
- There should be a minimal standard requirement for awards for 1/2/3 place in both female and male overall/expert
- These should apply to every event at unicon
- Extra or larger awards for experts should be at the discretion of the UNICON host. But should be equal across competitions. (Example: unlimited should not get trophies when standard only gets medals)
But when do you stop giving medals? When should you give ribbons instead? In some categories of competition age group has an expert equivalent and in others it doesn't. Example: 100m age group 1/2/3 would still be expert in all age groups. But in trials only 1/2/3 male and female finalists are considered experts, all other trials age groups get ribbons or certificates. ( Am I wrong about that???)
I hope I'm still on topic here
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@Phil
"Standard and Unlimited races are different disciplines and should both get the same equivalent 1/2/3 place medals"
Very often unlimited and standard races are held at the same time. 2 different disciplines - 2 winners. But what if there is only one man desired to be called the Best!
PDF certifficates - very OK, Certifficates for 1,2,3 shall be stamped, It would be nice, after Unicon to have option to buy printed certificates on good looking paper with stamp for places 4+
Events shall have the shape - pay for what you get. Pay for entry to each competition you register.
It would significantly reduce number of competitors, but also show what competitions are more popular.
More competitors = more funds for awards, than better awards can be given for popular disciplines.
Than a huge inequality may arise. For example: It is easy to measure long jump at home so less long jumpers will enter competition - poor awards. It is more difficult to compare rider skills in XC, so more riders will enter competition - better awards.
In my opinion there should be set minimum for places 1,2,3 in expert/final/overall, but more popular competitions desire better awards.
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I definitely think that awards for expert 1-3 should be the same regardless of how popular the discipline is. If you are the World Champion - it doesn't matter which discipline it is. You're the best in your discipline! And no discipline is worth more than another!
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Marie,
If we have set satisfying minimum requirements for trophies - e.g. metalic medals, than any World Champion will receive deserved honours. I do not agree that Slow Backward Race shall have the same wage as Flatland or Trial.
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Maksym, I personally don't think slow backward race has the same wage as Flatland or Trials... but it's still its own discipline and I think it should receive the same award as Flatland or Trials.
Because if you don't how do you define what wages more? What's better Freestyle champion, or Flatland champion? Or Muni downhill?
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Of course Muni downhill is better! :) I think all experts in every discipline should be treated equally. Just because there are more competitors or audience doesn't make it more important. If you don't think slow races should get nice medals than your best bet is to try and eliminate the race all together (which has been tried in the past and might be an optional race right now? Can't remember).
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@Maksym: "Very often unlimited and standard races are held at the same time. 2 different disciplines - 2 winners. But what if there is only one man desired to be called the Best!"
That man would have to choose. There will be two bests. But each of them will be the best!
@Maksym: "I do not agree that Slow Backward Race shall have the same wage as Flatland or Trial."
I agree. WAIT! Before you all turn on your Caps Locks, here's why. Slow Backward is not one of the required events. It is optional. Being optional, I would favor letting the host decide how to award it. Using Slow Backward is not the best example here, because I personally consider that event impossible to judge accurately, so the results tend to be subjective, not objective.
Beyond that, the 30m Wheel Walk is equal to Individual Freestyle. In the Olympics, is Curling equal to Giant Slalom? Is the Decathlon equal to Badminton? Not really. But they never question if the awards are. I don't remember ever seeing an Olympics that had different medals for different disciplines. I think that would be a good goal for us as well.
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John made the exact point I would. I don't watch a lot of the event in the Olympics, and I even miss some events at UNICON, but does that mean those events should be awarded differently? I don't think so.
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It seems like we have a general consensus for these points:
- awards between male and female should be equal
- awards between standard and unlimited should be equal
- awards should be equal within the ranks of teams, age groups, and champions (taking Kirsten's categories but leaving out world in champion to allow for other competitions than Unicon)
- pdf certificates should be available online with a summary of results for each competitor after the event (I think we should leave the design of this up to the person, maybe Robin, who will be making it)
However, there is still some discrepancy as to whether or not a rule should be made about the design/caliber of the awards. I think this topic should move to a new discussion since it's a separate issue. If people are cool with that then I can create a proposal for the things above.
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Go for it Patricia. All sounds right
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I'm cool wit dat, yo. :-)
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He said it.
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Sounds good to me too.
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In the proposal, I would change
Once the competition has finished, downloadable certificates must be available online with a summary of complete results for each competitor.
into
Once the competition has finished, a personal certificate must be made available to each competitor with a summary of their complete results. This can be done as an online download, and/or sent through e-mail, and/or made available as a physical copy on the event itself.
Reasons for change:
- made it clearer that each competitor should have access to a certificate with his/her own results, not to certificates for all competitors. Or at least, I don't think that should be possible.
- for smaller events that don't employ user login on their website, or that perhaps don't have a website at all, other means of distribution must be available.
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Oh and another comment. The proposal states"
Generally there are trophies for Champions and Teams, medals for Age Groups events, and ribbons or certificates for lower events or places.
Firstly, I don't understand "trophies for Teams". Does any team (freestyle, hockey, relay race etc) get a trophy?
Secondly, what is "lower events or places" in relation to Age Group events?
Perhaps it would be better to change to"
Generally there are trophies for Champions or for place 1-3 in finals, medals for place 1-3 in each Age Group for each event, and optionally ribbons or certificates for lower places.
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I agree with your changes regarding the distribution method of the certificates and the edit about trophies, etc.
However, I'm comfortable having the certificates available to everyone. All of these results are already public. What if a club president or coach wants to have access to the certificates to print them out on nice paper and present them to the competitors at their own ceremony back home? Results to all competitions are public so I think there's no reason that the certificates should be private.
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Good point about the results being public anyway, and a possible club ceremony.
Minor thingy: a space is missing before the last sentence. It now reads "itself.The design" (etc)
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Since the review period is almost over I'll let that one go so that we can go ahead and vote. I'll make sure Scott fixes it if it passes.
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I wonder if "and optionally ribbons or certificates for lower places." is really necessary. If it's optional why is it mentioned. If it's an extra that an organizer wants to put in place it's okay, but if it's not mandatory I don't see the point of including it in the rulebook.
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@Emile, I think it is meant as a hint for what's possible, and certainly acceptable. I'm fine with it either way though.