Fantasy Diamond League Contest -- Choose your teams for Doha!

This is freaking awesome, thanks!

The AI predictions show we’re not at risk of takeover quite yet.

This is sick, thanks!

Thanks to LRC for sponsoring the contest with prizes!

1st Place: Free 1-Year SC Membership ($100 value!) + Free T-Shirt.
2nd Place: Free T-Shirt.
3rd Place: Free T-Shirt.

Get your picks in to win!

Great work as always. I was back and forth on the 200 between Kerley, Norman, and Bednarek but ended up going with Kerley as my first choice. Definitely a lot of good matchups in Doha this year.

The women’s steeple and men’s 800 could be very telling as to where those events are headed this season.

Last year’s world champ Norah Jeruto was banned for PEDs and 2nd placer Werkuha Getachew will be out as a result of new regulations for DSD athletes, opening the door for a new steeple champion. Mekides Abebe and Winfred Yavi, 3rd & 4th both at the WCs and on last year’s top list, are both in this race, aged 22 and 23 respectively. But keep an eye on all the youngsters: Jackline Chepkoech (19, 9:02.43), Faith Cherotich (18, Commonwealth Games champ), Zerfe Wondemagegn (20, 9:06.37), and Sembo Almayew (18, 8:35i this winter). It won’t be surprising if one or more of these new names emerge as gold medal contenders. And I haven’t even mentioned the reigning Olympic champion Peruth Chemutai or former world champion Emma Coburn.

The men’s 800 has seemed a little weak the last few seasons, but this could be the year that a few consistent 1:42-1:43 guys arrive. There’s a chance of a North African takeover with Moad Zahafi of Morocco, and Djamel Sedjati and Slimane Moula of Algeria all in tomorrow’s race. Last year, Sedjati ran 1:43.69 and won the WC silver; Moula ran 1:44 six times and was 5th at the WCs; Zahafi ran 1:43.69 and dominated the NCAA champs—all 3 are 24 years old. 24 is far from aged, but those guys are elderly compared with Noah Kibet, training in the U.S. with the UAC, who is only 19. Kibet ran the fastest time in the world indoors this winter, winning Millrose in 1:44.98, and impressed with a 3:36.32 1500 at Bryan Clay two weeks ago. I expect the winner tomorrow will come from those four, but Wycliffe Kinyamal had the fastest 2022 SB (1:43.54) and owns a 1:43.12 PB. Clayton Murphy has the fastest PB in the field (1:42.93, 2016) and ran 1:43.17 as recently as 2021.

Made my picks! Really cool format, thanks for that.

Didn’t pick a lot of upsets - but pulling for Sha’carri, Norman, Kibet, and Girma.

Can’t wait for track season to really kick off!

Congrats to the winners! See the detailed scoring breakdown here:

* Note that as Kyree King was a late add in the 200 (got 4th), as he wasn't available for picking he is not included in scoring

We had to go down to the tiebreaker for the third place spot -- which was between vdub5ker (who signed up with 2 emails but the same picks so we'll allow it) and Matty G. Matty G predicted 10.75 while vdub5ker predicted 10.98 -- so Matty G takes the third place T-shirt.

Just want to point this out:

The winner picked 4 of the 9 winners correctly.

The runner-up picked 4 of the 9 winners correctly.

3rd place picked 5 of the 9 winners correctly.

Down in 43rd place I picked 7 of the 9 winners correctly.

Very fair, but I can't just go by the winners. You picked a 5th, an 8th, a 5th, a 10th, and an 8th, while the winner's worst pick was only one 5th place finisher and most of the rest were 1-2 sweeps, he picked 8 winners even if only 4 of them were his event captains.

What do you think would be a more fair scoring system? Maybe a 20-10-5-3-2-1 scoring for top 6 instead? Fyi, I just ran a simulation with that scoring system, and in that system you would be 14th place, and the top 3 would be SOGGY, Laurence, and Josh17.

If we only scored first place finishes as 1 point (2 points for captain), then you would be in a 12-way tie for 3rd with 15pts, after SOGGY (17pts) and Laurence (16pts). I like the idea of this but I don't think we can have a 12-way tie even with tiebreaker, it feels too arbitrary.

Open to ideas though!

Thank you for the very thoughtful response and for running those simulations.

I certainly don’t think it should be based solely on picking the winners, but I do think it should be weighted differently.

I think there should be more of a points discrepancy between, for example, picking 1. Sha’carri Richardson 2. Shericka Jackson and picking 1. Shericka Jackson 2. Sha’carri Richardson - as it stands, it’s a difference of 29 points versus 28 points, and you have to go all the way down to 17th in the standings to find the first person who picked Richardson to win (Laurence, who placed 2nd in one of your simulations).

Likewise 25 points out of a 29 point maximum seems too generous for someone who picked 1. Aregawi 2. Barega 3. El Bakkali, not even picking the winner in their top 3. In fact you have to go down to 7th place in the contest to find the first person who picked Girma as one of their 3, which is remarkable to me considering he just ran 7:23.8i…

It’s easy for me to say since I don’t have to do the coding for this, but I’d suggest something like this:

Captain:
20
12
8
6
5
4
2nd pick:
10
8
6
4
3
2
3rd pick “backup”:
6
5
4
3
2
1

Where your top-2 point earners score (giving more importance to the otherwise usually meaningless 3rd pick). So a perfect score is 28. If your captain places 3rd (8 points) and your 2nd pick places 1st (10 points) that’s 18. If your captain places 3rd (8), your 2nd pick bombs or suffers Emma Coburn’s fate but your 3rd pick wins (6), that’s 14.

In this scoring,

1. Richardson 2. Jackson = 28 points

1. Jackson 2. Richardson = 22 points

1. Jackson 2. Asher-Smith 3. Richardson = 18 points

1. Jackson 2. Jefferson 3. Richardson = 18 points

1. Jackson 2. Steiner 3. Jefferson = 12 points

In the case of someone picking 1. Aregawi 2. Barega 3. El Bakkali, they would now score 16 out of a possible 28, instead of 25 out of 29.

I think if you ran a simulation using that system, any discerning judge would say that the contest’s winners had better predictions than the top 3 from today’s contest (nothing against them - fair play to them).