Yuki took 3rd in WMM

Nice. That’ll buy him 2.5 cantaloupes and 1 watermelon in Japan.

...why are organisers choosing third place out out five runners who tied? Doesn't that make a mockery of the whole thing.

Surely they organizers can come up with a clear stated points system that ranks them in order, rather that just have a bunch tie and then just choose their favourite. It is a lot of money. It is there career. Presumably they'd choose their fave if the leaders tied too. Bit of a farce

If you were Dickson, Wanjiru, Rupp and Kamworor and you still cared you must be thinking you just missed out because Kawauchi, completely by chance, had on one day weather the man himself described as the best conditions he could have had.

If you don't want to get shut out by a tiebreaker, beat your opponents!

Yuki beat Rupp in Boston, so by head to head victories his win is better. Also having more DNF's should be the first thing to eliminate Rupp from the tiebreak.

They've got six main races - three in spring and three in autumn. Plus they add in Olympic marathon and World Champs in the years those are held.

I can't see anyone doing more than three at a stretch but more likely two.

In which case it seems like a (badly) contrived competition.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Yuki beat Rupp in Boston, so by head to head victories his win is better. Also having more DNF's should be the first thing to eliminate Rupp from the tiebreak.

Daniel Wanjiru beat Yuki Kawauchi in the 2017 WC marathon. So by this criteria Daniel Wanjiru was third.

Certainly they have a formal tiebreaker criteria. And this is not it. Will try to bring it up.....

In only its second year of awarding champions, the World Marathon Majors had to use a last-resort tie-breaking method to declare the women's 2007-2008 champion. Coming into New York, Gete Wami and Irina Mikitenko were tied at 65 points each. Wami, running today New York, had the chance to break the tie with a 1st or 2nd place showing. Alternatively, Catherine Ndereba, coming in with 41 points, could have surpassed Wami and Mikitenko with a win in New York today, if Wami finished out of the top 2.

As it turned out, Ndereba placed 5th and Wami 6th, leaving the series leaders still tied. With only one champion and one $500,000 prize allowed by the WMM, the directors first considered the head-to-head record between the two leaders. This too, however, was tied at 1 to 1: Wami beat Mikitenko in Berlin 2007, and Mikitenko bested Wami last spring in London. Digging deep into the WMM scoring rules reveals, "If the athletes remain tied after the head-to-head competition review, the final tiebreaker will be a majority vote of the five World Marathon Majors Race Directors."

That vote was taken at 1:30 p.m. this afternoon. The directors voted unanimously to name Mikitenko as the 2007-2008 champion. Among the reasons stated for the decision was that Mikitenko achieved her points in fewer races (thus placed, on average, higher in those races than Wami), and that her average times over the races in the series were faster. While these factors are reasonable, the series has made a point that times are not considered in the scoring, given the widely varied courses of the component races, with Berlin, London and Chicago producing much faster results than New York and Boston.

Mary Wittenberg of the New York Road Runners, speaking for the World Marathon Majors directors, said that in forming the rules and examining historic results they had considered a tie to be extremely unlikely, but that it appeared that the Majors were changing how top athletes selected races. Thus, in an upcoming meeting the directors would seriously discuss adding additional tie-breaking criteria and perhaps altering the scoring structure for future series.

INCREDIBLE!! After just the 2nd year of this WMM award system, they had a tie and have had multiple ties since. And they are still resorting to this antiquated and highly subjective method. There was a 1/2 million dollars at stake here in 2008 and some directors took a vote using average time as a criteria!!! (Kiss your chances goodby Desi), even though the WMM series has made a point that times will not be considered (as obviously like in X-C, times on different course vary widely). Bizarro, no???

Very good wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Yuki beat Rupp in Boston, so by head to head victories his win is better. Also having more DNF's should be the first thing to eliminate Rupp from the tiebreak.

Daniel Wanjiru beat Yuki Kawauchi in the 2017 WC marathon. So by this criteria Daniel Wanjiru was third.

+1

Wanjiru should be third.

Thanks.

So in 2007 one of the reasons for choosing Mikitenko was her average time was fastest. Not unreasonable to imagine she may have had at least slightly better conditions to average faster times (and Wami did trun the slower NY Marathon).

This time Kawauchi was chosen because he scored points in the most difficult conditions - which goes hand-in-hand with the slowest average time.

So a decision completely at the whim of race directors who are entirely inconsistent in their thought process. Brilliant. That's the way to establish a respected credible elite competition that'll boost the sport's popularity.

Not sure who should have been awarded 3rd without looking extensively at results and even then too much subjectivity. But I imagine Wanjiru tapered conventionally for his Majors, while Yuki most surely did not but still managed to accumulate the same # of points. And why wasn't much much more made of the fact that Yuki raced a 1:04 1/2 just 4 days after that grueling Boston, replete with all that air travel it entailed. Have any of you guys made that flight to Tokyo from the East Coast? Ugh

I like the idea of average points per race. Also on the head to head scoring, if it's a tie, they should add up how many seconds the competitors beat each other and whoever has the highest cumulative lead should win.

snow blow wrote:

Very good wrote:

Daniel Wanjiru beat Yuki Kawauchi in the 2017 WC marathon. So by this criteria Daniel Wanjiru was third.

+1

Wanjiru should be third.

OR Kamworor or chumba both 1 win out of 1

weird wrote:

snow blow wrote:

+1

Wanjiru should be third.

OR Kamworor or chumba both 1 win out of 1

Yeah, very weird. They need an objective set of tiebreakers in place before the next WMM series begins. This has happened time and time again with huge amounts of $$ at stake (not so much this year as the tie was for third, but these first place ties! - fuhgedaboutit)

sbeefyk2 wrote:

Nice. That’ll buy him 2.5 cantaloupes and 1 watermelon in Japan.

In Tokyo maybe, but there is more to Japan than Tokyo.

.....from the you can't make this shite up department.....besides the 3rd place tie with Yuki and 4 others on the men's side?! BOTH the 1st and 3rd places had to be decided by tiebreakers over on the women's side. "Mary Wittenberg of the New York Road Runners, speaking for the World Marathon Majors directors, said that in forming the rules and examining historic results they had considered a tie to be extremely unlikely" and this from over ten years ago & countless ties. I love you Mary, but what gives? When will someone involved with the WMM step in and add a few more tiebreakers besides head to head? I got one! Like the farcical shiteshow at the 2012 Trials where tarmac got a Nike screw impaled in her heart, we'll have a runoff. Yuki would be all over that!

Tarmoh not tarmac

Uhhh wrote:

They've got six main races - three in spring and three in autumn. Plus they add in Olympic marathon and World Champs in the years those are held.

I can't see anyone doing more than three at a stretch but more likely two.

In which case it seems like a (badly) contrived competition.

I don't particularly understand the schedule for this series. It used be over two years, now it is over a one-year period, but the series overlap. And you can only count two races per series. So with that few data points, it seems like a setup for tons of ties.

Just cut the crap and make go by calendar year or every two calendar years.

More evidence that the marathon is GARBAGE as a professional sporting event.

Ironically, of their five choices for third, they picked the one who is probably least likely to win if they all raced each other on a good day at top form.

I think the the tiebreaker should be a combination of who has the fastest 5k time and the hottest wife.