Is there a fair system for selecting international team members? Do people in general agree on qualification criteria in your country?
Do Fair Team Qualification Criteria Exist?
Every year agility enthusiasts worldwide discuss actively on international team qualification criteria. In general, team member selections based on the opinion of one person or a panel is considered most unfair. Competitors might even feel that it is not appropriate to ask for justifications for decisions or appeal in fear of not becoming selected next time.
World Championships Team Qualification Criteria in Finland
I have thought that the Finnish qualification system for World Championships Agility Team is among the fairest ones. Each dog-handler team that has gathered a certain amount of scores from competitions during the year will be eligible to participate in team try-outs. The try-out event is run over two days and comprises of five courses where the competitors who have a clean run will obtain scores based on speed. Four dog-handler teams will be selected to represent the Finnish Agility Team for both World and Nordic Championships based on the highest scores.
Are There Any Downsides in This System?
- In the case of unexpected injury, for example if the dog tears his paw after stepping on glass, the dog-handler team can no longer compete in the try-out event. This means the dog-handler team does not have a chance to be part of the team. If the dog is unable to run at the try-out event, regardless of how many wins or clean runs they have had during the year, they will not be considered. Even if the dog would recover from the injury well before the World and Nordic Championships, without try-out scores, they cannot be selected for the team.
- Finnish anti-doping regulations are really strict. Therefore, if your dog has an eye infection a few weeks before the try-outs and gets medication for that, he is not allowed to participate in the try-outs even if the medication is over and the dog is fully recovered.
- The standard course times are dependent on the fastest runs. Every second you lose to the winner of the run equals ten scores. For example, if the fastest time is 33.24 seconds and yours is 36.72 seconds, the winner gets 50 points and you’ll get 15.2 points from that run. So, if you run clean on a course where another dog-handler team is clean and faster, you’ll get less points from that run in comparison to a situation where the fastest dog-handler team acquires a fault, making the winner the second slower team. Every second that you’re slower, equals ten points less. Hence, if you are not running with the fastest dog of the competition, the amount of points you’ll get is partly dependent on luck.
European Open Qualification Criteria in Finland
In Finland the EO team members are selected based on placements in specific ranking. The fifteen best results of the dog-handler team during the year are taken into account and scores can be acquired from any official competition according to placement in that competition. The winner of each competition gets 5-12 scores depending on the amount of competitors. EO-team members are selected directly based on placements in the ranking. If somebody is not willing to participate, the team membership goes to the next one in the ranking list.
Finnish EO Ranking 2016: small, medium, large
Table of scores (according to the Finnish Agility Association)
| Placement | Less than 30 competitors | 30-50 competitors | 51-75 competitors | 76-100 competitors | More than a 100 competitors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | 5p. | 7p. | 9p. | 11p. | 12p. |
| 2. | 3p. | 5p. | 7p. | 9p. | 10p. |
| 3. | 1p. | 3p. | 5p. | 7p. | 8p. |
| 4. | 1p. | 3p. | 5p. | 6p. | |
| 5. | 1p. | 3p. | 4p. | ||
| 6. | 1p. | 2p. | |||
| 7. | 1p. |
Downsides to this system
- The amount of participants in competitions varies according to the location. The biggest amounts of participants are in competitions arranged in the Southern Finland. The winner of the large dogs may earn 9-11 points in competition in Helsinki whereas in the areas where there are fewer participants it wouldn’t be possible to earn more than 5-7 points. Thus, even if you win 15 competitions with the same speed in a smaller town as someone in Helsinki, you may not get enough scores to be selected to the EO team. One may of course travel to Helsinki for competitions, but for most people it would be too expensive and time consuming to do that often throughout the year (for example, it would take 30 competitions, provided that the dog-handler team is on podium at least every second competition).
- The winner of a competition with 50 participants, out of which half of them are at international level, gets seven points. On the same day there might be a competition somewhere else without any international level competitors, but 51 participants, resulting in more points. Because the latter competition has one participant more, the winner of that competition gets two more points.
- Only the winning dog-handler team gets many points, although there might be four more dog-handler teams within only hundredths of a second in time difference.
- In theory, it is possible to qualify to EO-team without any clean runs on agility course.
WAO Team Qualification Criteria in Finland
Third competition where participants are selected in try-outs is WAO. The selection committee organizes try-outs and the winner gets to decide on which two competitions they will participate in (biathlon, pentathlon or games). The selection committee decides the rest of participants to the different classes/competitions.
Is there a fair way to select the rest of the participants?
- Should the selection of team members be based on ranking?
- Should the other members also be selected straight from WAO try-outs results?
- Should the dog-handler teams that have succeeded in team try-outs, EO, national -, Nordic- or World championships receive points for WAO?
- Should the more experienced handlers with previous successes in big events get selected? But, on the other hand, there wouldn’t be new successful competitors if only the experienced ones are selected to the team.
- What about the age of the dog, should older dogs that may have their last year in competitions get a chance, or the younger ones who would benefit from the experience?
- Should as many handlers as possible get a chance or what if the same handler has more than one potential dog? Is it fair if a handler has trained more than one skillful dog, but only one will be selected to the team?
- Would it be better to prefer dog-handler teams who have lots of clean runs or teams with less clean runs but are more likely to have faster times?
- Is anybody capable of selecting team members objectively without any ranking or scoring system and not letting any preferences or personal relationships, i.e. friendship, dog’s breeders or training relationships effect the decisions?
Do the Best Dog-Handler Teams End Up Representing the Country in Each Championship Event?
Finnish agility association covers all expenses of the team members participating in World and Nordic Championships including travel expenses of the dog and the handler, participation fees and transport on site. Team members don’t need to participate in fundraising; everything comes “for free”.
EO and WAO team members need to organize all travels and accommodation themselves and also pay all expenses. Are the best dog-handler teams included when the team membership requires covering the costs, or the ones that can afford paying hundreds or thousands of Euros for few runs? Is it fair if you would be best in the world but cannot afford participating in the championships?
Is there a fair system for selecting international team members? Do people in general agree on qualification criteria in your country? Is there something specific in the qualification criteria in your country which could serve as an example for other countries? What would you change in your selection process?