When Ironman Hawaii meets the Formula 1

When Ironman Hawaii meets the Formula 1

  Jakob Ohlsen     Published: 10th March 2018

Have you ever wondered which nations are most successful at the Ironman World Championship in Kona? To find the best endurance nation we need a fair scoring system which takes a big enough number of athletes into account.

When I was looking for a good scoring system I checked out a number of other sports. Although it would be a great idea to take the athletes clothing, overall performance and style into account I had to scrap the idea to make use of the figureskating-scoring system, because there is just not enough data on the athletes B-score. I then took a look at the Formula 1 and derived a scoring method which is based on the point-system used in the fastest competition of motorsports.

The Formula 1 distributes the points as follows:

1st: 25 points
2nd: 18 points
3rd: 15 points
4th: 12 points
5th: 10 points
6th: 8 points
7th: 6 points
8th: 4 points
9th: 2 points
10th: 1 point

Because I wanted to take more than ten athletes into account I decided to distribute the points not just for the overall ranking, but for each age group, including the professional athletes. So Fidel Rotondaro, who won the age group M75-79 in an astonishing time of just 14:17:55 collected 25 points for Venezuela, just as Daniela Ryf collected 25 points for Switzerland.

Going through all results of the Ironman Hawaii 2017 I ended up with this overall nation ranking:

# Country Points Points/Athlete In Top 10 Athletes
1 United States 649 0.879 67 738
2 Germany 269 1.234 22 218
3 Australia 266 1.142 26 233
4 United Kingdom 186 1.248 17 149
5 Canada 138 1.2 16 115
6 France 124 1.17 8 106
7 Denmark 119 1.889 10 63
8 Netherlands 101 2.658 6 38
9 Switzerland 90 2 9 45
10 New Zealand 63 1.615 6 39
11 Finland 61 3.588 7 17
12 Belgium 53 0.946 5 56
13 Brazil 51 0.593 6 86
14 South Africa 51 2.04 4 25
15 Austria 49 1.531 3 32
16 Italy 40 1.143 2 35
17 Japan 40 0.5 4 80
18 Mexico 39 1.393 3 28
19 Norway 36 3.273 2 11
20 Russian Federation 32 1.882 3 17
21 Venezuela 29 4.143 2 7
22 Czech Republic 26 1.857 3 14
23 Sweden 26 0.578 3 45
24 Poland 25 2.273 1 11
25 Spain 24 0.429 4 56
26 United Arab Emirates 18 18 1 1
27 Costa Rica 10 1.667 1 6
28 Chile 8 1 1 8
29 Luxembourg 8 1.333 1 6
30 Argentina 4 0.267 1 15
31 Colombia 4 2 1 2
32 Ukraine 2 0.5 1 4
33 Paraguay 1 0.333 1 3
34 Singapore 1 0.143 1 7

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