The ranking system and challenges for countries outside of Europe.
In this episode, Coaches César Valentim and Peter Nestler talk about the Ranking Systems. 10 years after the introduction of the World and Olympic Rankings, what can we say about these? What can be improved? Are the national teams using? Is this ranking inclusive? What about ranking events that exclude parts of the population?
Direct qualifications via quotas, cadets and junior ranking systems and Performance Analysis systems are also topics discussed in this episode.
This podcast is supported by Hawkin Dynamics and Athlete Analyzer!
Visit our Instagram @taekwondopodcast and Facebook @taekwondocast
The ranking system and challenges for countries outside of Europe.
In this episode, Coaches César Valentim and Peter Nestler talk about the Ranking Systems. 10 years after the introduction of the World and Olympic Rankings, what can we say about these? What can be improved? Are the national teams using? Is this ranking inclusive? What about ranking events that exclude parts of the population?
Direct qualifications via quotas, cadets and junior ranking systems and Performance Analysis systems are also topics discussed in this episode.
This podcast is supported by Hawkin Dynamics and Athlete Analyzer!
Visit our Instagram @taekwondopodcast and Facebook @taekwondocast
Have you been looking for a Teon do podcast with qualified people who know what they're talking about, who help you keep up with everything going on in the Teon do world? Well, you found it. This is the Teon do podcast. Teon do news competitions in a of the events training in sports science, keeping the fans, coaches and high performance athletes up to date with the latest news and trends on Olympic TaeKwonDo. Let's do this. This is the TaeKwonDo podcast. And now your host coach, Cesar Valenti team and Peter Nestle.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Teon do podcast. We are a podcast based out of Austria in English language for everyone out there who likes Teon do on this episode, we take a look at the Olympic racking system and what challenges it brings for developing countries. Welcome to our podcast. I'm coach Caesar Valenti team. And with me it's coach Peter Nestler. Hello, Peter, how are you with the Paris 2024 games just around the corner. What are your thoughts on the direct qualification of athletes via the ranking system? Hello,
Speaker 3:Everybody. Welcome your check on podcast. Um, when it's about ranking system, this is always difficult to establish. You have to adapt them to the needs of the sport, and it always takes little time till they're fully elaborated. You could see in other sports like 10, they had, uh, two different ranking systems. They're now back to the original one and also in teal, they're, uh, constantly changing the rules of the ranking system to make it, uh, more, uh, convenient and to make it more reliable in the moment. The problem I see is that, um, athletes gain a lot of points. They collect a lot of points from big events. So when you're already in you get you, you have a safe place there. So if a new athletes is always rather difficult to enter the system, there is other approaches we both know, uh, and maybe we could propose the, the coaches and, and everybody could propose those changes to world. Checkon. What is your thoughts about it?
Speaker 2:Well, you are right about the system they at that are already playing in the system. They get a big advantage, uh, for you to go to a G tournament. You have most of the time they go on your own. Some others get to go with the national teams and of course, different expenses, different, uh, support staff. And when you go into the European championships or to the world championships or any other continental championship, where the access is limited to the national teams, just by going, even if you don't win the first boat, you already make points. Most of the cases, you get points as many points by just making the weight in, just registering as getting a medal in some G tournaments. And that's a little bit unfair since those tournaments are access exclusive to national teams or to very specific athletes. The, the that's one of the con the problems from keeping and accumulating, the accumulating, the points for so long, the ones that you make points at the Olympics, and you can, uh, go on vacations for six months and you'll still be top, um, on the ranking. On the other hand, the, the fact that the newcomers will have to be seated from zero. As we mentioned to episodes ago, if they have to start from zero, they will probably be about, they will be matched in the, in the seating against one of the top athletes making them hard to, to get there. Yes, the ranking needs to be updated, probably a little more complicated ranking, a little more dynamic ranking would be a good solution. And not only the ranking itself, the way to, to get the, the points to the ranking, the gate, the way to get access to the ranking is a little bit expensive. You have to have, uh, a lot of licensing. You have to have black belts registered in Korea. You have to have travel expenses. What about the financial aspects of attending these ranking events?
Speaker 3:Well, as, uh, all coaches, uh, well known also the athletes. Sometimes it is really a lot of money to enter the system. So you have to have, uh, as you said, you have to have the goal license. It's not, not a lot of money, but you have it every year. You have, uh, big expenses. That's roughly depends where you live and which events you're attending. Let, let me say it's between 500 and 700 euros per event per athletes. Then you have to add the coach, maybe some extra members of the team. So it's a, it's a big financial risk you're taking as a club or as a, whatever you are competing for, uh, to just enter the system and you have to enter it. Because as we said before, there is a lot of guys already having lots of points. So if you wanna, um, if you wanna compete at worlds or Europeans or Olympics, you have to gather a lot of points and therefore you have to enter as many, uh, competitions as you could get, because cause the, in the, especially in the beginning, the 40, uh, points gap, as it was maybe extending two 60 points now is not so easy to reach. And it's really a lot of money maybe with, uh, changing some of the roles. Um, you could make it easier for new, uh, athlete. We all know that it's not always the one with the most points that will be the Olympic champion. So that's an indication that the ranking system, as it is now should not, is the only solution. So maybe, uh, if you're looking to different sports, like, like chess, where it's important against whom you compete or in tennis, where you have a, a much, uh, narrow period of, of keeping the points, which is only 52 weeks in tennis. So one year, uh, maybe some of when you look some of the sport, um, and adapt some of the rules for technology would be fine. That's
Speaker 2:Something we can talk about later about, uh, some, uh, of the performance analysis and then comparing to the ranking. I do think the ranking, the introduction of the ranking 10 years ago was an important step in Teon first because it exceeded the Atlas needed big competitions, important that the number one and number two in the ranking do not get seated against each other. Uh, don't get matched against each other on the first round, eliminating the possibility of having the top athletes in the finals. So seating athletes through the ranking is a very good, uh, uh, development. The fact that the ranking points are democratic and fair that everyone despite being are not, uh, engaged with their national governing bodies in terms of, uh, national team, uh, or even team, uh, um, uh, travels that they are allowed to participate in these open events. They are allowed to compete for themselves for their clubs and gather the points, uh, independence of the national teams. Again, uh, the ranking has a lot of, uh, benefits. It allows a more transparent and, uh, fair, uh, competition allows also more exciting, uh, final bouts. And, uh, it, it does have these huge advantage comparing of about not having a ranking, like for example, juniors and cadets. You can be the number one in pan American region, number one in European region. And you don't have a ranking for juniors the worldwide, and you go to an open tournament and you'll match each other on the first boat, uh, instead of fighting each other, at least on the final four that's, uh, uh, something that needs to be considered the ranking is there probably having more ranking events. Um, but again, we do have a lot of ranking events. Some of these ranking events are not really fair and democratic. If they exclude a part of the population, uh, people have been talking about this. What about the boys? What about the non-religious, uh, or, uh,<laugh> boys out there that don't have access to these specific events that will exclude parts of the population, religious games, um, gender games. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Um, as you said, if you have a ranking system and you rely on the ranking system, it has to be on, on the same basis for everybody. So it's not a good thing to have events in there which exclude a part of, of, of the competitors. As you said, religious games, female events, whatever you should not put those to the normal ranking events. Um, it is good to have those events on the other end. That's very good because it extends the participation. It builds a more, it's a more marketing approach. Let me say it that way. Um, so you have more events which are dedicated to the athletes, but, um, it's not good to include those in the standard drinking process, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Well, I, on that opinion, I might think that the solution is not, not including them, but creating alternatives for the athletes that are not in these minorities. For example, I'm all for promoting and giving, uh, ranking points for such events, allowing the promotion of participation, using the ranking as a promotion tool, as you said, as a marketing also as a motivation for the team's to compete, um, not only religious events, I would say also, um, events for university athletes, events for worker, athletes, events for, uh, other kind of minorities that should also be, uh, promoted. But we are talking about the big majority of the players not being included on these events and for that solution should be found if we create, uh, uh, religious events, why not create a nonreligious event, why not creating a male only event, why not creating a transgender event? Um, we have all these, uh, uh,<laugh> CGEN event. There's all these kind of options for us to, to make sure that the human rights and the development of human rights do not. I impinge, uh, the, the fairness of the sport if rights. So there are events, there are rankings, and we should probably consider adding more ranking events. Yeah,
Speaker 3:That's true. Fully agree.
Speaker 1:You're listening to the tech one O podcast. Now back to your hosts, coach Caesar, Valenti team, and Peter Nestler,
Speaker 2:We've been talking about the ranking events, the challenges and the benefits of the ranking events right now, the world ranking and Olympic ranking are only for seniors. Some continental rankings already include cadets and juniors. Do you think the world Techon should already introduce ranking for the other age divisions?
Speaker 3:Well, it's, uh, very easy. If you want to have professional sports in all the divisions, you should have ranking system because it shows, um, it shows a, it's a clear picture of what's going on on there. If you keep, uh, excluding juniors and CAS and whichever, uh, age division, uh, it's not appropriate, uh, to have it as a, as a, as a big event. So I would say extend it to the junior and CADs division, uh, but maybe not with all the same roles, maybe think about adapting the roles to those age categories.
Speaker 2:One of the things, uh, with, uh, we mentioned on the first part was not having a ranking for juniors allows, uh, the, the match, the drawing of the matches to be a little bit unfair, but on the other hand, promoting events for, especially for cadets that have ranking events, allows them to travel and to have, uh, a competition calendar that is probably to overload it for some, and one between the ages of 12, 13, even unfair for some of the, uh, countries that are not allowed to compete in these events, would a solution be for example, to limit the number of, uh, eligible competitions or, um, increase the number of eligible competitions, but reduce the number, uh, of points allowed to be, uh, uh, made, for example, I have a cap, uh, on the points, or even allowing a cap on the participation, not allowing you to go to more than three or four tournaments a year, or not allowing you to make more than 20 points a year or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 3:There's all very good ideas in the moment. Uh, when we see the seniors, we have 40 points maybe extending to 60, that's a huge amount of, of, of, of workload and putting on the athletes. You should not do that on juniors and, and, uh, especially not on the cat. So limiting is, uh, is a solution. You, you also can see that in, in, in other sports, uh, where you have ranking system, it's not open to all the events, it's a number of events, especially of the high level events. Um, also putting a cap on the, quite a low cap on the maximum number of points that it could get, uh, would maybe put more relief on the stress they have.
Speaker 2:Would you suggest a different ranking system? Do you have any ideas for a different ranking,
Speaker 3:Um, a different ranking system? Yes. I mean, we have, um, it's a competition sport where you compete one against one. So, um, it is quite easy to tell there is a winner and there is a lose in, you could develop a ranking system out that already happened. We have a ranking system now quite, uh, an easygoing. So you have Chila, uh, events, which are all the same, no matter if there is hundred athletes or 1000. So for the juniors and the carrots, maybe you could start, um, putting more, uh, focus on, on the size of the event. Um, so getting more points on bigger events or changing the Chila system, the Chila system is now you have the Chi 1, 2, 4 8, whatever. Um, this not necessarily has to be the same at the juniors to that extent because we, we all, we all know Olympic, uh, Olympic points is, is, is huge, as you said, six months on vacation possible.<laugh> um, so maybe all the little size down for juniors and carrots,
Speaker 2:That's a good, uh, solution, for example, would be to, to allow to don't determine the number of the, of the G class. So, so not the, the, the quote, the multiplication factor of the event before the event, prior to the event, but wait until after the event to decide if based on the number of athletes, I would say, even based on, on the number of countries, um, to, to create and multiplication factor, it would be a G one or G two. The second would be to create probably different levels. Uh, you would be like in, uh, some other sports, you have the league and you are on either on the premier league or first league, and then you have a second league and you would only transition as an athlete to the higher league after you completed, uh, some points or some criteria on the second league. That would be also a possibility allowing the athletes to be forced to go to some events and not to others, uh, not mixing, uh, the, the points and not allowing the athletes to make the same points in a tournament with two opponents<laugh> or actually the ranking already, uh, allows you not to make the same number of points, but let's say, uh, between and 30, do you get the same points, but it's not the same event. If you have 30 competitors from the top nations, or you have 10 athletes from the neighboring countries in some cases, very easy, uh, competition level. So yes, the rankings, there are other options probably should, uh, have, uh, a bigger talk, uh, not only on this podcast, but, uh, worldwide at the conversation about this topic. Um, another thing about the event, and especially in Europe, when, uh, it was introduced. And we mentioned before by, uh, the current secretary general, the quota events and the qualification quotas for some championships, it exists right now in Europe, exists with the president's cup, also around the world to the, uh, European championship. Should we actually promote that kind of system have more direct qualification, quota events for other championships, like for example, the world championships?
Speaker 3:Well, when, uh, an Antonio first introduced those kind of direct qualification was a lot of critics, uh, on it, uh, especially the MNAs were criticizing that, uh, there a different criteria than before, which was only nominating them, the athletes for, uh, maybe European or continental championships. But, uh, I think in the meantime, the coaches and also some of the athletes do like that system. And, uh, in my opinion, that's why we are here. So we are doing this for the athletes and for the countries and not for the MNAs. Um, the direct quota is, uh, existing. I think it's a good vehicle. You could also extend it to different formats. That's true. Um, it's a, it's, it's a matter of trying what the people like, in
Speaker 2:My opinion, I think in the end, as you mentioned, there was a lot of friction in the beginning from the member national associations regarding the quotas, because they would allow athletes outside of their national governing boarding system to actually qualify for their events. But some of, uh, the other member national associations found that it was an opportunity to actually qualify more ATS for the events. They would, uh, send the athletes to the competition for the quotas. They would get two spots from that event and they would actually get the third one from the, or even the fourth one from the national team nominations, allowing them to send more athlete for the same event, allowing them to have a better chance for medals, allowing them for getting a better ranking position as a team in the end of the event. So there is, of course that little problem that comes with democracy is that we have to accept that other people also have their opinions or even their Chan chances. Uh, and maybe some people don't understand it so much, embrace it and, uh, see it as an opportunity to even qualify more athletes. So the qualification quota for the continental championships has, uh, been, uh, increasing there's a lot more events. Um, I do think that, uh, at SIM similar to, to some other events, if you win or these or the other events throughout the year, you qualify, uh, super grand free and to all these things that exist. Um, and, uh, um, like some events have, if, if you win three or four of the grand slams to qualify for the, uh, super grand slam situations like this will allow, uh, the events and the quota events to be a little more comp competitive. But again, trying to, not to go to the, to the fact that if the events are too big, then it's also right now pandemic a big risk, a lot of financial burden on the teams on the athletes. And of course the, the level are not being fair for the newcomer. So probably a mix of all we've discussed,<laugh> having different leagues, different ranking events, different quota events. Uh, we're talking about, uh, uh, a lot of proposals, and it's be interesting to hear the, the opinion from, uh, feedback from our listeners. Uh, they, you have our Facebook and Instagram. You can just write to us and our email as well. It's on the podcast information. It'll be interesting to, to hear what they, they think about it, and probably even talk to the authorities about, uh, those things. It's not job as podcasters to, to do it, but as coaches and as national teams probably, uh, out there listening to us, they should actually consider those situations if they think that we are right. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about the ranking system is most of the people in the national level take the ranking system from WT as their own only criteria or adaptations from the WT events as a ranking criteria. And some other countries are already, uh, doing a performance analysis ignoring, uh, the event itself, but analyzing the, uh, sorry, they've ignoring the event G class and analyzing the event itself and the competitors on each category to, uh, to, uh, do a performance analysis. The, like, as I mentioned before, uh, other systems do it at the world level. So their entire world ranking is based on a performance analysis. Some other, uh, member national associations are doing it for our national team criteria. And that's something that would pro probably be, uh, considering that the easier due tournaments or the continental championships don't have the same impact, the opponent against whom you win or against whom you lose, uh, your matches is probably, uh, should cons should be considered in, in the, in that ranking system. Uh, some countries are already do it as I said, but should we also consider it for the world ranking? Was it, would I know it's not, uh,<laugh>, uh, too complicated because it's all informatics. If it's all about, uh, uh, a good database thats at its dynamic, but do you think we should actually implement some kind of, uh, performance, uh, uh, uh, factor also in the ranking system?
Speaker 3:Uh, yes, as said before, uh, it's important, uh, against whom you compete, uh, then you have the result win or lose, and it should not be the same points in any case, uh, regarding the MNAs and the ranking systems. Some of the MNAs only rely on the full world tech role ranking system, which does not show the full picture in many cases, as we said before, there is, uh, events where you have to get nominated. And if, if you only rely on those, then you might miss any other, uh, talented, uh, athletes who, who hadn't has not had the chance to get nominated for whatever reason. Um, so a little more, a little more, uh, work on a performance analysis would be fine, would give a more accurate, uh, picture. And don't forget the ranking system, uh, is also there to have the seatings, which we is not, uh, important for the, for the MNAs in many cases, it's just for the G plus tournaments.
Speaker 2:Yes, the, the fact that you win against a top seated athlete, a top ranked athlete, and, or you lose against, uh, a non top athlete should not have the, uh, should at least matter something for the, for the ranking itself for the MNAs, obviously because it identifies the athlete. And it's totally different for me to lose against the, uh, Olympic champion against, or losing, um, to someone that is not even on the rank or the other way around winning against someone that is not on the rank or winning against someone that is top on the Olympic, uh, ranking. And this should be considered not only on the, and it is most of the cases in the national teams, but it should also be reflected in the, in the national ranking, in the, in the world ranking. I see other sports do it in, in chess, as you mentioned, uh, before they have a very good, uh, uh, system, um, in, uh, tennis, other, uh, uh, sports, they do count for the, um, the ranking position of your opponent to decide how many points you win or lose in the world ranking, allowing the athletes, not only to win points in some cases, even to lose points and, and go down, um, by losing point once by losing, uh, uh, the abouts, not only not winning points like it is right now. Thank you, Peter. It was a pleasure being here with you and with everyone who was listening. This was the Teon podcast. The third episode, if you haven't already listened to our other episodes that are available online, wherever you listen to your podcasts, we are releasing you episodes. Every stay tuned, subscribe to the podcast, leave us a positive review and share it with your friends. See you next time
Speaker 1:You've been listening to the Teon do podcast, keeping the fans, coaches, and high performance athletes up to date with the latest news in trends on Olympic Teon do your host coach Caesar Valenti team has almost 20 years of experience with high performance TaeKwonDo and has worked all around the world. As a TaeKwonDo trainer. Peter Nestler has been teaching TaeKwonDo for more than 20 years, and he's currently one of the top referees in Europe. We hope you enjoyed the show, make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, find us on@techonedopodcastonfacebookattechonedocastandthewebsitetechonedopodcast.com. See you next time.