User:Nsenx/Sandbox

Proposal for an Athletics World Cup

Currently, the OGF World has two main global sporting events: the Football World Cup and the Pax Nova Games. Both of these events create a lot of demand and thus mobilize entire cities and even entire countries, in the case of the World Cup; therefore they end up being hosted by very big cities, often in collaborative territories or mapped by very experienced users. In addition, these events take place every other year, and in the time between an event and the next one the site changes and some mappers might lose interest in international sporting competitions. In order to allow for medium sized cities to host international sporting events, and ensure more frequent international sporting competitions, I propose creating an Athletics World Cup in OGF. Below is the extended proposal, covering all the topicis that need to be decided in order to create it and my proposals for each of them.

What sports compete?

In the RW equivalent, there are 49 total competitions: 24 for each sex (that mostly coincide) and 1 mixed (taken from the RW 2025 event, though changes are uncommon):

• Races
  • 100m
  • 200m
  • 400m
  • 800m
  • 1500m
  • 5000m
  • 10000m
  • Marathon
  • 110m hurdles (100m for women)
  • 200m hurdles
  • 3000m steeplechase
  • 20km walk
  • 35km walk
  • 4×100m relay
  • 4×400m relay
  • 4×400m relay (MIXED)
• Throwings
  • Shot put
  • Disk
  • Hammer
  • Javelin
• Jumping
  • High jump
  • Pole jump
  • Long jump
  • Triple jump
• Decathlon (Heptatlon in the case of women)

All the throwings and jumpings are "field", all races are "track" except 20km and 35 km walk, the marathon and in some cases the 10km, that tend to take place outside the stadium through the city streets; and the decathlon/heptatlon is mixed. We should try to keep this as close to RW as possible, but there is room for changes. I would only propose to make the masculine and femenine competitions the same, that is, to have a female 110m hurdles and a female decathlon competitions instead of the 100m hurdles and heptatlon, respectively (or viceversa).

How many competitors per sport?

It is important to keep in mind that not all events have the same "capacity": the marathon will take place only once through city streets, and thus can have more participants; the 5000m race only has heats before the final and takes place inside the stadium, so there will be less participants; the 100m race tends to have several qualifying rounds, thus having more participants, etc. How many rounds each specific sport has is discussed below, but we have to keep it in mind for this topic. The RW data can be informative for the OGF counterpart.

In the RW, the athletes get to compete in the Championships if they qualify in other international tournaments that vary depending on the specific discipline. Safe to say that this will not be the case in OGF, as it would make the process overly complicated. A simpler way would be to assume that athletes qualify in National competitions or that each participant country has their own method for qualifying athletes. Either way, I advocate for putting a maximum number of athletes per participant country, somewhat relative to population.

An important thing to note, is that I am mostly referring to athletes because, at least in the RW, a single country can be represented by several athletes in a single competition, and a single athlete can compete in several competitions, as long as they do not overlap in the schedule. We could discuss if we will limit this or even allow it at all, as it could make the process more difficult.

How often?

We also have to keep in mind the Pax Nova Games, which take place every year divisible by 4; and the Football World Cup, which takes place in even years non-divisible by 4. This whole idea apperas as an attempt to provide more international sporting competitions that are less mapping-intensive and thus more accessible to smaller cities; therefore it shouldn't take place the same year as either of the other two. I would propose for it to take place every odd year, which would make it coincide with the RW counterpart, but it might be too often and thus too intensive on the organizers, though this could ensure more participants and more interest in the project. Once we decide during which years does the Championship take place, we would need to discuss which season in the year does it take place. This could be probably be up to the host cities, depending on their climate, but some parameters could be put in place. Regarding its length, most RW instances have been around a week long, and as long as the number of sports doesn't change much, it could probably remain the same.

Another thing to discuss would be when the first Championship took place. The first RW Championship was in 1983. I would propose a later date such as 1985, coinciding with the 25 year anniversary of the first Pax Nova Games.

How to decide the winners/medalists?

Depending on the sport, some have different rounds that athletes have to pass through. For example, the longest ones (marathon, decathlon, walk) only have the final; while the shortest ones (100m, 200m) can have several; all of this depends on each specific championship. Maybe we can decide some general parameters and each host city has to define specifically their case. This influences mostly the schedule. At the end of the day, these championships are usually only 1 week long and take place mostly in one single stadium, so several competitions will have to take place at the same time, and the schedule for each year should be developed by the host.

Once we know how many rounds are there for each discipline, a very important thing to decide is how do we determine which country wins in each instance. We must find a way to decide a winner in which the host country is not able to boost their position. This would be important for the games that are simulated from 2027 onwards, as I would assume that the results of each race would be announced "at the same time" as they would be taking place, maybe turning it into some sort of event, same as the Football World Cup. For past games, randomly deciding the winners of the medals is enough, maybe saying when the World Record was beaten; in order to keep a ranking with the medals each country has accumulated, although this is entirely optional.

In the case we end up simulating the whole championship as if it is taking place; each edition of the championships, the host country would need to decide how many rounds an athlete has to overcome successfully in order to win, and what do they need in order to pass to the next round, together with creating a schedule. This will let us know how many races would need to be simulated and when. Next we would need to simulate each race to know who qualifies for the next stage/who wins the medals. Deciding the clasification of the numbers would probably be enough, but for championships that would be simulated in real time, maybe giving some actual data (the time the race took/the distance an athlete jumped etc.) could make sense. This could be up to the host country. I propose we divide the countries into smaller groups that would make up each race if needed, and then randomize the order to get the ranking. We can then assign a certain time/distance to each country following the randomly assigned order. Looking at RW data and adding outliers for disqualifications/injuries would add to the realism.

As an example, this is how a 5000m track race would be simulated according to my proposal:

1. We decide how many rounds are there, how many athletes does each one have and how many would pass on to the next one. Let's say there are two heats round with 16 athletes each. The top 8 athletes of each one would be the ones to go on to the final (it would be more realistic if we also kept in mind the times each athlete had, but it would complicate the process. It can certainly be done however.)
2. We randomize the countries to get the clasification of the race. Optionally, we assign each country the time they took to finish the race..
3. With the data in mind, we now know which athletes qualified for the final,so now the same process would be repeated for the final race.

What is needed to host?

Having a decently sized track and field stadium, with hotels and training facilities nearby and a connection to an international airport should probably be enough. While the RW list of host cities includes quite a lot of capital and large cities, there have been a lot of medium-sized host cities (Stuttgart, Seville, Eugene, Gothenburg). We could turn this into a feature and put a maximum (maybe relative?) population that a city can have in order to host the championship, in order to ensure that the original intent of medium sized cities being hosts perdures.

In addition to the mapping, and especially in order to assign hosts retroactively, we could ask for an overview of how the competition went, maybe including a table with participant countries and how many medals each had, if any World Record got beaten, a schedule of when did each game take place, the number of tourists that it attracted or the economic impact it had on the city. But this doesn't need to be a requirement.

Another factor is to ensure a wide variety of hosts across continents and territories. I would propose alternating between collaborative and owned territories; while continents would rotate on a three year basis (Archanta, Uletha, The Tarephias). However, depending on which cities express interest in hosting we can decide when to begin applying this measure (as it wouldn't necessarily have been implemented the first year), which would give us more wiggle room in order to assign host cities retroactively.

How to decide who hosts?

We could probably use the same structure used for the Pax Nova Games for cities to be able to apply to be host cities. This means creating a comittee of mappers to evaluate the applications, and probably help if the games end up being simulated. I am not particularily well-versed on how the Pax Nova Games work or how did they assign all of the host cities, so if anyone can guide me to that I would appreciate it.