Last week, we were so excited to announce new national rankings by Equestrian Canada (EC). This is an exciting system that will unite riders in their respective divisions from coast to coast and its launch represents a successful milestone for the Sport Operations Department!
The process to put together the rankings was a long one, as we wanted to ensure the system operated correctly and in alignment with our current competition structure and EC Rules. Within EC, we spent many hours talking to the CEO, discipline managers and Board of Directors. We also gained valuable insight from several competition organizers and providers of automated results technology. The results that determine rankings are submitted by these two parties – competition organizers and results technology providers – so we rely heavily on them to structure competitions using the appropriate EC divisions and then provide accurate results to EC in a timely manner.
We’re debuting with rankings for two of the three disciplines for which we currently collect official competition results, hunter/jumper and dressage, which should go live in summer 2021 as competitions start to pick up with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. We weren’t able to launch all disciplines at the same time because not all disciplines require competition organizers to submit results under the current EC Rules and there is varying complexity with how divisions can be split between disciplines. But don’t worry, rankings for additional disciplines are in the works!
The decision to launch the rankings with only results from Gold level EC sanctioned competitions was made for similar reasons: currently, EC does not collect results across all levels of competitions, so we had to start with what is currently available. Plus, the Gold level offers the best distribution across all provinces/territories, so it’s a great place to start!
In addition to expanding the disciplines and levels available, we are constantly thinking about different ways to organize information to recognize athletes in multiple ways (e.g., by class or horse breed).
The rankings were also a great reason for EC to tackle some lingering challenges. Creating the back-end formulas was simple enough, as they were already outlined in our EC Rule Books, but how EC receives the data that goes into those formula (i.e., the results) needed a serious overhaul. It was a big challenge to figure out how to code and collect split and combined divisions, but cleaning up the submission process will lead to greater data integrity and consistency in results as we move forward.
We really hope you enjoy the national rankings as much as we’ve enjoyed developing them. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to see where you, as an athlete, or your horse fit on a national leaderboard. This also makes it a helpful tool for athlete development – constantly in the top 10? Maybe it’s time to move up a level!
And in the big picture, it will give EC a great annual overview of nationwide performance and become another valuable tool informing the development of programs and services for years to come, including future award and recognition offerings to recognize the awesome work of Canadians in the show ring!
Sincerely,
Maria-Christina Lepore
Coordinator, Competition Services
mclepore@equestrian.ca
Pavel Robinson
Programmer Analyst
probinson@equestrian.ca
Rachel Huebert
Director, Sport Operations
rhuebert@equestrian.ca