Re: Freestyle Competition
| Subject | Re: Freestyle Competition |
| From | abw@cre.canon.co.uk (Andy Wardley) |
| Date | Tue, 16 Jun 1998 16:52:07 GMT |
| Newsgroups | rec.kites |
Nick Boucart wrote:
> Can't agree more. I liked the format very much. It was intense, i
> think for both the fliers and the audience.
And Nick is just too modest to admit that he won..... :-)=
It was a great, fun competition and we saw some truly awesome flying. I myself had to give way to Nick in the second round after 3 minutes of some of the most enjoyable flying I've ever participated in. Even though I lost I was still trying to wipe the smile off my face an hour later.
The format was simple:
- We drew the flier's names out of a hat (actually, the fliers drew numbers out of a bucket, but the principal is the same) to order them.
- Fliers are split into pairs (1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, etc)
- Each pair takes to the field in turn.
- Music is played for 3 minutes. Ideally, it should be something that is lively, suitable for the wind conditions, and fairly consistent.
- When the music starts, the first flier flies.
- After 30 seconds, the first flier lands and the second begins. We had the commentator call a "3..2..1 change" which allowed the fliers to put in a cool landing or take-off.
- After 30 seconds, the fliers change again. In all, each flier has 3 x 30 second blasts. Each heat lasts 3 minutes (6 x 30s)
- At the end, the judges vote for one flier or the other.
- The winner goes through, the loser goes out.
- At Hackney, we had 14 competitors so after the first round we had come down to 7 fliers. We assembled all 7 losers in a row and had them fly a single 30 second segment in turn. The best flier was then picked to go through to the next round to make up the numbers.
- In other competitions, it may be preferable to have a 3 person final. If we had started with 12, we would have had 6 in the next round then 3 in the final.
The mood was informal and relaxed and a great deal of sportmanship was shared beetween the competitors. The judging panel was a little haphazard, consisting mainly of myself, James Robertshaw and Hans von Lengerke with additional help from Sean Turpin and any other fliers who happened to congregate near the PA. Jeremy Boyce had the final say. In future, a formal judging panel may be desirable, but in events like this which are "Just For Fun", it seems perfectly adequate (and acceptable to the fliers as far as I can tell) that the fliers pretty much judge themselves. Jeremy ran the audience Clap-O-Meter which brought them into the competition much more and may even have influenced the judges a little on occasion :-)
The defintion of Freestyle Flying is a little imprecise, but we were looking for radical tricks, executed cleanly, with style, flow and form. It's difficult to talk about "choreographing to music" when it's a 30 second burst, but many of the fliers showed definate sensitivity to the music and managed to produce performances that clearly went well with what we were hearing.
There were 2 major highlights for me. The first was watching Andy Preston fly a Stranger Level 7 in his first round match. Awesome! Absolutely awesome! This is the guy who inspired me so much all those years ago and Sunday made me remember why. Unfortunately the wind wasn't so kind in his later rounds and he just got pipped out in the semi-final by Nick's fellow countryman, Sebastian (surname unknown, my apologies).
The second highlight for me was flying against Nick in the second round. I started with some good flying but had a bit of a tumble early on. That was all the chance Nick needed - he put in a blinder. Not to be defeated I responded with some pretty hot stuff. Not good enough, though, because Nick came back even stronger. So I got better... So Nick got better.... After 3 minutes it felt like Nick and I had flown our hearts and souls out and I wasn't ashamed in the slightest to come second in that particular heat. :-)= Massive grinage!
So here are the scores as transribed from a little scrap of paper that was the scoring sheet... I'm afraid I don't have full names for all of the competitors, particular those of our Belgian friends who were over in force. My apologies for that. If anyone can fill in the gaps, I would be grateful.
Round 1: Alistair Hammond beat Chaz (?) Nick Boucart beat Hans von Lengerke Sebastian (?) beat Carl Robertshaw Andy Wardley beat Sean Turpin Andy Phelps beat Jan (?) James Robertshaw beat Chris Matheson Andy Preston beat Sam Eaton
In the play-offs, the judges felt that both Sean and Carl put in great performances and were hard pressed to decide between them. Carl very generously agreed to step down and let Sean go through. Ali had to leave early, so Carl ended up flying in his place after all.
The first round took about 40 minutes to run. We ran the final rounds a little later in the afternoon which nicely broke up the competition, gave the fliers a chance to rest and freed up the arena for other kiters and displays. This was definately a Good Thing
Round 2: Sean Turpin beat Carl Robertshaw Nick Boucart beat Andy Wardley Sebastian (?) beat Andy Phelps Andy Preston beat James Robertshaw
Semi-Final Nick Boucart beat Sean Turpin Sebastian (?) beat Andy Preston
Final Nick Boucart beat Sebastian (?)
Well done to Nick and all the other competitors, judges and organisers that made it possible. I found it a lot of fun as a competitor, judge and organiser and the response from other people has been encouraging.
I think the great thing about this format is that you can do it strictly for fun, like we did at Hackney, or you could actually take it a little more seriously and run it as a proper competition. It's quick, can be run in phases over a day or weekend, it requires no formal scoring or calculations (although an independant judging panel would be necessary for a "proper" competition), it's very accessible to fliers - there's no need to practice for weeks before, just turn up and fly, and it's also accessible to spectators - no complex scoring or rules and the results are instant.
Now doesn't this sound like exactly the kind of competition that
major companies would be interested in sponsoring? A few k in prize
money would be all we require to run the "1998
It's a nice thought, isn't it?
Here's to the next one.
A
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Andy Wardley <abw@kfs.org> Signature regenerating. Please remain seated.
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