2022 World Championship Update
Fellow racers
We hope that you are well and that you are looking forward to some slightly warmer weather, fingers crossed!!
We just wanted to give you a quick update on a couple of things relating to next year's World Championship in Poland.
Firstly - Juniors
Due to the delay in holding a WC some of the juniors who would have competed in Italy last year are now in fact seniors. After a lengthy discussion we felt it was a real shame that they missed out on their last opportunity to compete as a junior. We discussed the pros and cons of allowing them to still compete in the 2022 WC as juniors and decided that the best option will be to allow them to decide whether they want to compete as a junior or as a senior.
Due to the lack of racing throughout the pandemic we do not feel that the older juniors will have gained an unfair advantage. They may be older but they will not have gained an extra two years worth of racing experience. If they decide to compete as seniors this will not affect the number of places already allocated to that country. The juniors come seniors will be given an additional place in their own right. They will simply need to state on their entry forms whether they are entering as a junior or senior.
Secondly - Maximising entries
FSR Poland contacted us asking if it was possible to increase the number of entries per country. They wanted to maximise the number of competitors and hopefully give more people a chance to compete following the recent lack of racing.
We looked at the timetable and put together a mock timetable with the maximum number of heats possible. Analysing this timetable against the one used at the WC in Egletons, we felt that doing a blanket increase in the number of competitors per country would be a risk, as it may not be possible to accommodate that number of competitors. We needed a method of increasing competitor numbers that would be more flexible and that would provide us with the opportunity to ensure all heats are full, thus avoiding running heats that are not at full capacity. As you can probably imagine this is easier said than done as it is impossible to know how many entries you will get until after the closing date, by which time it is too late to make any big changes.
Therefore after a lot of discussions we came up with the following:
Entries collected as normal, 3 per country plus the usual addons (Current World Champions, European Champions, wild cards etc). Closing date will be 3 weeks earlier than normal. At this stage the team leaders will collect the money from their competitors as normal but will not transfer it to the organisers just yet.
With the initial entries each team leader will need to submit a reserve list (People who would like to enter but did not qualify for their countries team). The list should include all classes and the competitors for each class should be in number order, 1st reserve, 2nd reserve etc. There will be no limit to the number of people who can be put on the reserve list.
When the initial entries are closed we can work out how many spare places are available per class. (These places will be filled from the reserve lists). The aim being to ensure full heats with the maximum number of competitors in each heat.
Once the original heats are all full we will look at the available space on the timetable and using the reserve list increase the number of heats (based on the number of competitors on the reserve list) to fill the timetable. We may end up with more heats in some classes than others but this is what usually happens anyway and the idea is to avoid running half empty heats where possible.
Once the successful competitors from the reserve list have been chosen the team leaders will transfer all of their teams funds to the organiser.
If you have followed that lot and are still with me then you will probably be thinking - how are you going to make sure it is fair choosing people from the reserve list!
This is where we had to think out of the box and the answer may sound a little strange but in reality there is no perfect solution so..................we will be pulling names out of a hat!!
If everything goes to plan I will do this live via Facebook so that you can all see what is happening!
How each country compiles their reserve list is entirely down to that individual country.
We really hope that you will all support both iMBRA and FSR Poland and help to make next year's World Championship one to remember.
Kind regards
Lauren on behalf of the iMBRA Committee
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