Handicap system at 2024 Fireball Worlds

The 2024 Fireball World Championship attracted 56 teams for the racing on February 11-16 in the southeastern Australian venue of Geelong, Victoria.

While Thomas Gillard and Andy Thompson (GBR) took the 2024 World title, they finished only 34th in the handicap results in which Canadians Richard and Liam Quinlan took top prize. The event used the Top Yacht scoring system, with Rod McCubbin explaining how the handicapping results are determined:

For over 20 years we have been evolving HC methods for club racing and regattas. For the Fireballs our “Regatta PHS” was used. We get access to lots of event data to play with, and of all the HC methods we have evolved for regattas, this methodology has been the most consistent.

Often at regattas the boats who are likely to be in the top half dozen or so are reasonably well known even before the event. We have tried to develop a methodology that has two prime objectives:

• Some folks have traveled a long way. If they perform consistently poorly even on HC, then they are less likely to attend the next event. We try to encourage such folks.

• Towards the end of the regatta, we strive to keep the Series HC scores as tight as possible so it makes for an exciting last couple of races.

We have several criteria for determining the worth of a HC methodology, but ultimately we ask if the HC Series Scores are tight towards the end of the regatta?

A rule of thumb here is that the boat placed two-thirds of the way down on HC Series scores (ignoring boats who are out of contention because of lots of DNC, DNFs etc ) has a score that is no more than double the first place getter.

For this event, the last place getter not influenced by DNC, etc is place 48, so two-thirds is place 32 with a score of 183.5.

First place was 85, so double that is 170 so it fails that test. But the first-place getter is abnormal in being a long way ahead of second on 113.5. Double which is 227. When time permits, we shall try to figure out why that happened. It is rather unusual.

No one boat should hog the first, second, third places cross the races in the event.
Yellow highlights podium place getters.

The math in the calculations is lengthy. The math changes depending on the number of races that have been run.