DFL

Celebrating last-place finishes at the Olympics. Because they're there, and you're not.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

DFL MIA: Combat Sports

In 2004, I gave up on trying to figure out last-place finishes in the combat sports -- boxing, fencing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling. At the time, it seemed too difficult to determine which of, say 16 competitors eliminated in a preliminary round was in last place, and the final standings after an event were unclear: were these their world rankings adjusted to reflect the results of Olympic competition, or could I use these rankings for my purposes? As I said, I gave up.

I don't like leaving so many events -- a total of 61 gold medals' worth -- untouched, so if you can help me figure out a way to include some of them, let me know. Otherwise, they'll be absent from DFL's coverage once again.

posted at 10:18 AM

4 Comments:

  • At 10:50 AM, August 14, 2008 , Anonymous Electric Landlady said...

    With boxing, maybe some kind of for/against point spread?

    I have no idea how judo is scored, though.

     

  • At 1:23 AM, August 20, 2008 , Blogger daeguowl said...

    It seems to me that the you should be able to include Judo quite easily. Let's take men's 60kg as an example. There is one preliminary bout between a Ukrainian and a Brazilian, so you could take the loser of that as the worst competitor (after checking that they did not come back in through repecharge). Or failing that you can look at the scoring system. Each bout shows a series of 4 digits for the score for earch competitor. If the first digit is a 1 then that indicates that that fighter won by Ippon which is equivalent to a knock-out. Simply determine who was knocked out by Ippon in the fastest time and I think that is your player that did worst. In the men's 60kg, it was the Asutralian guy D'Aquino who lost to the Greek guy after 20 seconds...

    I guess there is no serious seeding because the repecharge takes care of that by giving a second chance to those beaten by semi-finalists...

     

  • At 1:35 AM, August 20, 2008 , Blogger daeguowl said...

    For the Greco-Roman wrestling they seem to give a classification. I don't fully understand it but I guess they rank people eliminated early on according to how far their opponenets progress. Anyhow, it must be calculated on a rational and official basis so I suggest accepting it. Otherwise, just take the guy who lost by the biggest points margin in the first round.

     

  • At 1:43 AM, August 20, 2008 , Blogger daeguowl said...

    For Boxing, take the guy who was knocked out the quickest or if no knock outs, he who lost by the biggest points margin.

    For Taekwondo, just look for the person eliminated first....Knock out trumps fight stopped by ref trumps points gap trumps superiority trumps points ceiling trumps points etc.

     

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