Evaluating relative performances in disabled sports competitions

Percy, DF; Warner, DB

Abstract

Handicapping systems play important roles in many sports. This paper focuses on disabled sports competitions, which primarily aim to encourage participation. Nevertheless, prizes are awarded for relative performances and should be allocated fairly. We review handicapping procedures specifically for disabled Alpine skiing and identify imperfections with this system, particularly how historical and new results are combined to determine scaling factors. Significant problems also arise due to different class sizes and variations in courses and conditions. We investigate the difficulties in establishing a suitable handicapping system and propose modifications to the existing procedures that improve their fairness. We develop simple mathematical models and statistical analyses that might be suitable, based on results data relating to several years of competition, and we evaluate the performance of our proposed method in comparison with that of the existing approach.

Citation

Percy, D., & Warner, D. (2009). Evaluating relative performances in disabled sports competitions. IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, 20(2), 185-199. https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpn018

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2009
• Deposit Date: Oct 10, 2011
• Journal: IMA Journal of Management Mathematics
• Print ISSN: 1471-678X
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 185-199
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpn018
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/imaman/dpn018