Worlds 2008 final routines

sergio · Post by **sergio** » 29 Aug 2008 00:10

How can anyone think Vasek had more difficulty/variety than Damian?

Some people said that there is a world of difference between dropless and 1 drop. I say there is way more than a world of difference between Vasek's technical and Damian's.

I analyzed both routines on paper (adds, ratios, different concepts & tricks). If I have some more time during the next days, I'll write a longer post with some of that.

Jorden · Post by **Jorden** » 29 Aug 2008 06:46

I did too.

Total Number of Contacts:
(starting when music started)

Damian: 111
Vasek: 110
Sergey: 130

+/- 1 move or so.

Number of Unique Moves:
(bs = both sides)

Moves aren't all in sequential order. Also I counted far, ss and toe set downtime moves as different moves.

Damian: toe stall bs, toe set butter bs, far legover bs, clipper bs, stepping ss clipper, spinning clipper, ripwalk bs, infinity bs, clip ss butter, pixie legover bs, smear, dimwalk, schmoe, merkon, gyro clipper, clipper ss legover bs, sidewalk, blurrier, blur bs, parkwalk bs, blizzard, double atw i-o, far clipper bs, pixie far clipper, pixie ss clipper, stepping ss illusion, atomic legover, magellan, toe whirl, spinning knee bump, spinning whirl, lap catch, flapper kick, swirl, whirl, fog, diving clipper, pdx illusion, gyro legover, stepping ss mirage, far swirl, scorpion's tail, ripstein, clipper ss mirage, double spinning clipper
TOTAL UNIQUE: 57

Vasek: clipper, far clipper bs, infinity bs, ripwalk bs, clipper ss legover, stepping ss clipper, ducking clipper, inside stall, toe stall, spinning clipper, diving clipper, far legover, sidewalk bs, double over down, double double down, inside kick, spinning knee bump, barfly, clipper ss butter, schmoe, pixie ss clipper, PS whirl, knee bump bs, superfly, osis, symp whirl, blurry whirl, spinning toe stall, whirr, 2-bag juggle, whirlwind
TOTAL UNIQUE: 37

Sergey: in kick, toe kick, toe stall bs, clipper bs, ripped warrior, far legover, ripstein, infinity bs, clipper ss legover, barfly, stepping ss clipper, blurry whirl bs, ducking clipper, swirl bs, blur, diving clipper, ripwalk bs, schmoe, smear, inside stall, legover, mirage, stepping far legover, pdx whirl bs, 2-bag juggle, drifter bs, atw i-o, stepping ducking clipper, osis, symp whirl
TOTAL UNIQUE: 38

Damian had 50% more unique moves than both Vasek and Sergey.

Gielnik · Post by **Gielnik** » 29 Aug 2008 08:33

thanks Jorden and Dan for make it clean!

Jeremy or LOFA, have you ever been to footbag tournamet?

Lauri · Post by **Lauri** » 29 Aug 2008 09:00

I was just about to ask Jeremy if he's ever been to worlds since you're always so interested about whats happening in the scene and tournaments and all. Maybe you should come and be the judge next time instead of posting into a forum without anybody even seeing your face.

Ian Brill · Post by **Ian Brill** » 29 Aug 2008 09:17

Gielnik wrote:thanks Jorden and Dan for make it clean!

Jeremy or LOFA, have you ever been to footbag tournamet?

I have made it to my share of events, and put in my time. Enough time to see this sport progress, evolve, and in some cases resist evolving.

Could this have been a PM? I suppose we could start putting it in our sig., in lieue of "I have a valid opinion".

Ian Brill · Post by **Ian Brill** » 29 Aug 2008 09:26

I have a quesion. Should I assume that by not having attended worlds that contributing to the sport and the community since the mid 90's makes my ideas irrelevant? I sure hope not. That's a bit narrow-minded and hinting on classist, imo. What do you think?

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 29 Aug 2008 16:37

Lauri wrote:I was just about to ask Jeremy if he's ever been to worlds since you're always so interested about whats happening in the scene and tournaments and all. Maybe you should come and be the judge next time instead of posting into a forum without anybody even seeing your face.

If you want to give me $2000, plus my wages from the time off work, I'll be happy to come judge.

Note that these suggestions are ad hominem attacks and are not attacking anything I've said. I've been to almost every footbag tournament within Australia. Australia is the only country which has official rules that are the same as the rules used in this competition, and I wrote those rules and have judged 3 national competitions using them. Of course a number of people on this forum have seen my face - pretty much every footbagger that has been to Australia has.

I think those unique counts are a little out of whack. Instead of unique moves, how about a count of unique components? The reason I say this is that using 4 components (8 if you count both sides) you can 16 unique moves. In this case I'm thinking butterfly, mirage, pixie set, stepping set. Ie. a routine which is very strongly shuffle based is probably going to have a lot more unique moves, but I don't think it holds that having a lot of different shuffle moves means that you have a lot of variety.

I'm not going to engage with logical fallacies again (re; the ad hominem's).

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 29 Aug 2008 17:18

Of course this debate is missing the main points, which is that Damien dropped and Vasek and Sergey didn't.

I think this point really leads on to; "What should the weight of a drop be?"

Which leads on to the point that there aren't any kind of guidelines at all (outside of Australia). Because of this, discussing which routine is best is rather pointless. What we should be discussing is how to improve the rules so that it isn't open to such varied interpretations. Regardless of what the results of these routines should have been, I think it's a much more significant issue that the judging is so subjective that it's impossible to look at these routines and put forward objective facts about how much better a routine with 1 drop has to be to beat dropless routines.

LEGOMAN · Post by **LEGOMAN** » 29 Aug 2008 20:57

this is probably going to come off harsh but hey its LEGOMAN so fuck it right?

i could barely force myself to finish watching vaseks routine because his style was so off and the routine was so boring. i couldnt finish twisters but i couldnt see any really good artistic value of it

the level of routines was just sad this year IMO

Lauri · Post by **Lauri** » 30 Aug 2008 02:13

Jeremy wrote:If you want to give me $2000, plus my wages from the time off work, I'll be happy to come judge.

Ok so if it's about money or whatever it is thats holding you back giving your contribution and help you want to give to the community, if I were you (or any of you), i wouldn't give it at all, since the only way to give it is on some fucking online forum.

I respect the judges

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 30 Aug 2008 04:42

That's not really true. I've been on the IFPA board of directors and I'm still on a couple of IFPA committees (membership, IFC, I was on sanctioning for a while as well, as well as being part of some other organisations).

Although there is a lot of things I ignore on modified, it's certainly still the best way of getting meaningful opinions about the direction the sport should be moving in and pretty much every time I want to try to make some change within the IFPA, I run my opinions by modified first, to see if it's viable and what the main objections are.

I think respecting people isn't the same as publicly agreeing with them if you don't actually agree. I think it's entirely possible to respect somebody and still vocally disagree with decisions they've made. Indeed if you did disagree with them and they took offence at that, it would be a sign that they don't agree with you.

On the other hand, launching into ad hominem attacks rather than addressing the actual points somebody has made is a very clear sign of either disrespect or stupidity, as an ad hominem attack only has meaning if you're making deliberate slights against the person you're attacking.

Ian Brill · Post by **Ian Brill** » 30 Aug 2008 06:13

I don't have too much time because I have to get on a bus in a few hours to go to a tournament, but I would like to say that I am extremely dissapointed in the behavior of some people on this thread. I think it's not in my interest at this time to engage in intellectual debates with people who obviously have no respect for our efforts, or the care to notice that this is a not a bunch of unsubstantiated conversation. I think at first it was three or four people that agreed that they were unsatisfied with the judging system, and as Jeremy has so eloquently described the thread has become littered with unprovoked, ad hominem attacks. Jeremy seems to be doing a good job of keeping this thread real so I am going to bow out now, and concentrate on more things like earning enough money to go to Berlin next summer! And practicing my German

acxel22 · Post by **acxel22** » 30 Aug 2008 17:07

Thanks to those who gave me donations for the quick release of videos

Thanks to those who also showed apreciation for my efforts.

Thanks to those who respect the judges and don't try to be wannabe judges. It's really hard to judge at this level (finals), and it's so easy to say that they are wrong.

Thanks to everyone who was at worlds, it is such a nice event with so many nice people from all over the world, it was my 4th in a row, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

TheLast · Post by **TheLast** » 30 Aug 2008 17:13

acxel22 wrote:Thanks to those who gave me donations for the quick release of videos

Thanks to those who also showed apreciation for my efforts.

Thanks to those who respect the judges and don't try to be wannabe judges. It's really hard to judge at this level (finals), and it's so easy to say that they are wrong.

Thanks to everyone who was at worlds, it is such a nice event with so many nice people from all over the world, it was my 4th in a row, and I'm looking forward to the next one.

word.

Lauri · Post by **Lauri** » 31 Aug 2008 13:56

LOFA wrote:I have a quesion. Should I assume that by not having attended worlds that contributing to the sport and the community since the mid 90's makes my ideas irrelevant? I sure hope not. That's a bit narrow-minded and hinting on classist, imo. What do you think?

Yes they are. Atleast your opinions regarding this years worlds routines, they are irrelevant.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 31 Aug 2008 19:12

Lauri wrote:
LOFA wrote:I have a quesion. Should I assume that by not having attended worlds that contributing to the sport and the community since the mid 90's makes my ideas irrelevant? I sure hope not. That's a bit narrow-minded and hinting on classist, imo. What do you think?
Yes they are. Atleast your opinions regarding this years worlds routines, they are irrelevant.

Not only is that completely illogical, but it also means you'd have to dismiss the opinions of the only two people to make major contributions on the side that the results were correct (Dan and Jorden). I think it's pretty accurate to say that the majority of posts about which routine is better are as meaningful as your post - ie. add absolutely nothing to the discussion, but instead simply attempt to retard debate through illogical arguments.

Lauri · Post by **Lauri** » 31 Aug 2008 21:01

Illogical? I didn't follow any logics here.

Dan's and Jorden's posts are way more meaningful to me than yours because they have atleast participated into Worlds in few years back, not just sitting on their assess and writing posts. And they didn't say things like "Vasek sholud've won" or "Dropless Vs. One drop shouldn't even be debate" in the first place.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 31 Aug 2008 22:41

I wrote up the rules that are used to judge routines at worlds. I think that probably counts for something.

But whatever. You are entitled to your opinions, whatever they may be, and if you don't have respect for somebody who has spent hours and hours working as a member of the IFC (which is the body that controls the rules etc.) for no personal gain, then I think that's a pretty good reflection on what kind of person you are.

I'm certainly not going to engage in these pointless arguments about who is in credible position to comment on whether they agree on the results or not, or what the word "respect" means.

Ales Zelinka · Post by **Ales Zelinka** » 01 Sep 2008 06:21

Lauri, thank you for supporting the judges. I will not really comment anything much, because I hate to type for ages. But I wanted to say, that even if this forum brings a lot of negatives, it primary brings the possitives. It can at least keep people being interested in whatever footbag problematics. I respect and admire everybody who takes his/her time for deeper thoughts and writes them down. If I wanted to do the same I would be the prisoner of my computer.

I had the chance to spend some time with Jeremy and I think he knows a lot about footbag. Maybe even far more then many people living near enough to "be around the happening". Jeremy, thank you for sharing your ideas.
And also I thank everyone who really tries the same thing. Jordan, David C. and many many others. Comments of you might cause enough presure to change things in footbag.

I would like to be active, but rather then spanding all my time on the computer I prefer to do other things.

Thanks for all analisis!

Moglum · Post by **Moglum** » 01 Sep 2008 06:31

(I am not assaulting anyone, especially not you Jeremy)

The IFC and "official rules" is one thing. The reality is a completely different thing.

I personally would bet, that there was exactly one judge at the whole Worlds who actually read any current rules. And that is of course Steve.
And from my personal experience of a judge/freestyle director in the last few years (including 3 Worlds) it is usually like this. The judges get their knowledge about the judging system and how to score the routines from judging clinics organized by Steve and (mostly) from their own experience with competing or playing footbag. The written rules actually don't play any role in their "education" and "certification" ( in over 95% cases I would say, exceptions could exist) and most of them never saw them.

These are opinions gathered from my point of view. I am not the one to draw any conclusions from it. You can take whatever you want from it.

But obviously the gap between any written rules or guidelines and the actual everyday reality of freestyle tournaments is huge. And I watch it with disappointment that most of discussions happen right after some controversial decisions (Vasek beating Ryan, Damian beating Vasek). That alone would be ok, but does anything comes from the discussion? Something than actually has any impact on the way we run tournaments and/or judge routines?
It is sooo easy to watch 3 videos over and over again and just point out what went wrong. But what we really need to do is take some something from it so we can avoid the controversy in the following year.

So pls avoid personal attacks and try to agree on what could have been done to get more "accurate" results. Just bear in mind what footbag is and what isn't. 3 high speed cameras and 10 paid full time judges from countries not represented by players in the pool are a great idea, but totally useless for footbag

That would be a thread I would follow very closely. Try to surprise me pleasantly

There is a very big chance I will be involved in running freestyle at Worlds next year again, and I still see so much room for improvement.