Unofficial UK Slalom BBS

I was wondering if some one can enlighten me on age groups
My six year old entered his first div 4 on looking in the rules and age groups i put him as j10 but looking at rankings there are j7 and j6 so which one do I put him under ?.

The year book age group says j10 is this correct .

J10 is the lowest "official" age group, but some people do put lower age groups on the entry cards. The online rankings database only shows the official age groups, are you looking at the yearbook rankings? I haven't got a yearbook to hand to check.

Are you seeing that on the division 4 rankings page or in div 4 results or something?

Officially your son is J10, but if the race organiser wants to acknowledge (i.e. has prizes for) younger entrants J8 or J7 might be appropriate - you can either put down J10 and leave it to the organiser to change to younger if they are going to classify them, or you could put in J7 which will highlight to the organiser that he is extra young, but they may still change it to J10 if it suits the prize categories better for them (or J8 since the other junior groups are in 2 year increments). Just make sure you put the year of birth in correctly and the organiser will be able to work out the appropriate group.

I may have seen other age groups ranked at junior championships?

Most organisers use Simply Slalom software to manage entries, we put in year of birth and it tells us which age group, although it is possible to override the suggested value.

Perhaps we should consider extending the rules to consider J8 and J6 as legitimate age categories?

I use J8 in the results and the prizes but think J6 is just pandering to the parents.

I'm happy to see small people's efforts rewarded at races, but J10 is the lowest age group that has enough competitors for a meaningful league. See http://www.canoeslalom.co.uk/rankings/leagueJ10.shtml

J8s and J6s could still just be included in the J10 league though.

But making the age groups "official" would enable consistency.

Can we have a M60 as i find it hard beating M35s

Mike Mitchell wrote:Can we have a M60 as i find it hard beating M35s

We do, you're leading it:
http://www.canoeslalom.co.uk/rankings/m ... ague.shtml

There are no separate prizes for the different M groups though, if there were at many races every M would be a winner

Although there are a number of Master leagues.
There is only one official "master" age group. So year book and ranking lists show "M".

When a ranked paddler is added to a start list via either via the online entries or via Ken's system then the default age category will be a "legitimate" one J10, J12, J14, J16, J18, U23, S, M.
I think Simply Slalom allows organiser to overwrite this. Canoeslalomentries does not.

Masters that have elected to join the leagues are handled separately within the ranking system which creates leagues in different Master age groups.

It would be entirely possible to add M35, M60 etc as separate legitimate categories to our rules, but I think there was some concern that not all masters would want to declare there category to that extent and realistically at the competition itself it's just the M bit that is likely to get used for prizes. So realistically limiting M to a single category makes sense.

Equally we could add J8 and J6 to legitimate categories, but continue to keep the J10 league include J8s and J6s. From the point of view of ranking lists and then start lists the younger categories could be more useful as organisers may choose to reward very young paddlers. It does not mean that organisers have to give a prize for each junior category, but if they choose to do so they would know who is in it.

Sorry Dee,
page63, C3.5 enumerates the masters age categories. 5 year bandings from 35 upwards. So M35, M40, M45 . . . M60, M65, M70, M75 are all official age categories.

In my experience, most masters are still 25 in their heads (or 85 when they wake up ) so do not admit to anything but 'over 35'.

Canadian Paddler wrote:In my experience, most masters are still 25 in their heads (or 85 when they wake up ) so do not admit to anything but 'over 35'.

Happy to admit my age just don't get anything for it. Now if we were to set out that the fast guys are the U23 paddlers (young and in their prime) and equate age bandings as follows:
J10 J12 J14 J16 J18 U23 S M35 M40 M45 M50 M55 ...
Handicap -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 -5 -10 -15 -20 -25 -30 ....

Then I could just about cope with racing against a 10 year old Suppose I will be asked to provide an ACM Rule Change for this??

Canadian Paddler wrote:In my experience, most masters are still 25 in their heads

I don't expect to survive past 30, still haven't come to terms with the obvious fact that I did....

Canadian Paddler wrote:Sorry Dee,
page63, C3.5 enumerates the masters age categories. 5 year bandings from 35 upwards. So M35, M40, M45 . . . M60, M65, M70, M75 are all official age categories.

In my experience, most masters are still 25 in their heads (or 85 when they wake up ) so do not admit to anything but 'over 35'.

Yes sorry. I was explicitly referring to ranking age bands which do not split masters into subcategories. C3.4. And the actual ranking lists.

My use of the word official and legitimate were wrong as although the masters competition is outside of that, it is still official, just in a different way. I couldn't remember whether an actual rule had been added to this effect or whether the league tables were just being done for fun anyway. I should have checked

Mike, there are a number of us 'of a certain age' in P/1 Vets.
You would be very welcome to join our start line!
Best Wishes!
Jerry.