My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

[RMc]

Perhaps I jumped the gun somehow, but my complaint is not about the top of the list, but rather much deeper down. Paula Radcliffe is listed as 15th in this year's AOY balloting. Yet in 2003, TFN didn't even list her on the ballot. Seemingly, the only difference is that she started TWO marathons this year vs. one in 2003 (what a doozy it was), and DNF'd a 10k on the track, whereas she had no track races in 2003. Somehow just stepping onto the track qualifies her to be on the ballot, whereas running the POY (and perhaps the POD!) does not. The logic fails me (again as it did last year).

[marknhj]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

Count me in. I had exactly the same thought when I saw the rankings.

[gh]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

Huh? Radcliffe was 12th in the '03 voting.

[gh]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

Ahh, now I get what you mean. In '03, Radcliffe was able to get No. 12 even though she was just a write-in candidate because we didn't include her on our list of nominees (and so explained on the Board). The logic is now as it was then: nobody is going to get an Athlete Of The YEAR nomination for a single-race season (even if we did choose it as the Performance Of The Year).

This year she had World Rankings in three different events, including a WL time in a track event to go w/ her NYC win.

You need to understand that when we prepare the nominees, we apply some across-the-board criteria to ensure that there is "consistency" among the candidates. The criteria vary from year to year, and even from category to category in the same year.

But we will demand that everybody on the nominees list fulfills x of y criteria. So that's why all No. 1s aren't on the ballot, and why all Olympic champs aren't on the ballot. Indeed, the criteria are wide-ranging enough that you could be both this year on the women's side and still not get nominated. Radcliffe failed that sniff test in '03. And would have even if she had broken 2:00.

[marknhj]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

>In most yearly rankings, there seems to be a bias towards performances from the
>later part of the year - they are just fresher in the voters' minds.>>

The "Oscar" theory is an interesting one, but I can tell you that even if Radcliffe's one race had been the day before the ballots went out she would not have been on the nomination ballot. People with one usable race don't get nominated, pure and simple. That's not a season. (Tergat's 2-race barely is; if I had it to do all over I'd probably not have let him get on the ballot either.)

>>>

Garry, I think this is your post that Rmc and I remembered from last year (thread: Why Radcliffe Not AOY, your post December 17, 2003). I'm more confused now as she did, indeed, get 12th.

Edit: You cleared it up 9 secs before I hit "post"!

[RMc]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

The problem as a I see it is that somehow TFN has equated one marathon with one 100m race. Of course, no one could reasonably argue that a sprinter could be AOY based on a single race, but yet we're having this discussion about a marathoner. Clearly, the world at large does NOT equate a marathon with a single 100m race. In fact, the likely equivalence is more likely to be about 10 100s or more to a single marathon. So why have the "multiple race" criterion? Does TFN have the "half dozen race" criterion for, say, the 800? Or the "dozen race" criterion for the 100? I see no evidence of that. This arbitrary criterion is biased against one and perhaps two events which TFN ranks. It's time to drop the criterion and recognize that a single marathon can be a runner's entire season.

I also note that enough of the panel disagreed with the TFN policy last year to put Radcliffe 12th solely as a write in candidate. In fact, TFN appears to have been trying to rig last year's ballot to prevent her winning the award. TFN did not explicilty disqualify her, and yet knew that many on the panel would have ranked her No. 1 if they had seen her on the list of candidates. By simply putting her on the ballot, she may very well have been AOY.

[hitchkicker]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

Actually, Justin Gatlin won the Jesse Owens off of one race. Without that race he doesn't get a sniff at the award considering he didn't win the OT's or WAF and got worked over by Crawford and Asafa all year.

[gh]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

<< In fact, TFN appears to have been trying to rig last
>year's ballot to prevent her winning the award.>>

Ludicrous! If we were going to rig the ballot, we'd have rigged it the other way so she won. In our best interest saleswise to have a cute blonde distance runner on the cover every issue (see RW).

And just out of curiousity, why would we want to prevent her from winning the award? The mind boggles.

[RMc]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

And just out of curiousity, why would we want to prevent her from
>winning the award? The mind boggles.

Certain key members of the staff might have anti-distance/pro field event biases.... ;^)

But more seriously, intentional or not, the effect was to bias against her election. Certainly, last year you expressed the belief that a marathoner did not deserve to be AOY except under exceptional circumstances, and it was largely your decision as to whether she would be included on the ballot. So, although you have only one vote, you are able to influence the votes of other panelists by limiting the set of choices given to them. While they might (and did) write in other athletes, the structure of the ballot both directs the choices made by the voters, and limits the ability of voters to implicitly coordinate their votes for a candidate not on the ballot. (This is the same issue in the presidential election, and why Ralph Nader wanted to formally be on the ballot.)

[gh]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

I don't know who should be more offended, me because you'd suggest I'd tinker with the process, or our international body of experts who were certainly completely aware of what Radcliffe did (one race isn't too hard to keep track of, particularly since they made it only the second unanimous POY choice in history) and were completely free to vote for her and you're suggesting they're stupid.

There is a world beyond distance running Rich.

[RMc]

Re: My AOY complaint-Why Radcliffe in 2004 but not 2003?

>I don't know who should be more offended, me because you'd suggest I'd tinker
>with the process, or our international body of experts who were certainly
>completely aware of what Radcliffe did (one race isn't too hard to keep track
>of, particularly since they made it only the second unanimous POY choice in
>history) and were completely free to vote for her and you're suggesting they're
>stupid.

I know for a fact that if an athlete (or a politician) is not listed on a ballot, it is MUCH more likely that that they will not receive many votes. That was the case in 2003. It had to be brought to my attention that she wasn't on the ballot initially, and then I rectified the situation. I suspect that many other panelists also were not aware of her absence from the ballot. Certainly there wasn't the bio that goes with the other athletes. So, I'm not suggesting that the panelists were stupid--I'm suggesting that they were ignorant due to the fact that information was withheld from them (perhaps intentionally given your response to this initial observation last year.)

I raise this point because I think your "criterion" for keeping her off the ballot was arbitrary and capricious, and that you should not prejudice the outcomes with your own biases about which athletes should be eligible for AOY.