Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Kurt Caselli | Ride In Peace

By now everyone has heard that the dirt bike community lost one of its favorite sons; Kurt Caselli.  I never had the privilege of seeing him race live but I have many DVDs and recorded programs that highlight the career of one of the most successful dirt bike riders of all time.  Alyssa Roenigk of ESPN wrote a revealing article that highlights the story of Kurt's journey toward a Baja 1000 victory only to unfold on that fateful day across the Baja Peninsula.  It's a brilliant narrative on perhaps one of the most sorrowful events to touch the motorcycle community in a long time.

Motorcycle racing is a dangerous sport and all these riders are beyond courageous.  They know the risks yet their hearts drive them to perform at an unbelievable level.  We, the fans, appreciate all they do but we'll never know the sacrifices they endure.  The sport lost a legend, one that will not soon be replaced.

Ride In Peace Kurt Caselli.

You can find Alyssa's article at xgames.espn.go.com/rally-moto-x/article/10078322/kurt-caselli-last-ride

The Roost'r

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The Roost'r CLAW | The Evolution of Supercross

The top 10 riders accumulate the most points, get all the endorsements and attract all the attention and the rest struggle to be a player in this game.

Fans know that you can have a great ride and still lose a race.  They also know that less than your best is sometimes good enough to take the checkered flag.  A quick look at practice times will illustrate the point so the conclusion becomes obvious; it’s all about the start but some riders carry an unfair advantage – apparently this race to the holeshot is fought in the off season with the stroke of a pen.  But what if we could take the start out of the equation, neutralize track times and completely ignore the final results?  Could we still score a race?  The thought intrigued me.

Supercross is a very unique sport in that guys like you or me, well maybe not me, have the opportunity to compete against the best in the world, however given the disparity in the support received by such riders is it any surprise that the marginal rider rarely finds himself on the podium.  So I asked myself; is winning or losing really an accurate measure of a riders’ performance?  Should it be when some riders possess superior equipment, testing and training capabilities?  Track times are relevant in the context of racing but without further analysis they won't accurately measure the performance of the rider himself. Furthermore, the track conditions and personal effort put forth in a main event is far more intense than in practice and the line between control and utter chaos can be very different from rider to rider plus the level of competition at each race can differ.  All this led me to believe that we, the fans, could benefit from a holistic approach to evaluating our favorite riders.

Teams with the deepest pockets have an enormous advantage.  The training tools they have available are no match for the privateer but when it's all said and done it comes down to one thing; performance.  Inspired by sabermetrics I decided to look to statistical analysis to help answer some of these nagging questions.  If I could level the playing field and discount performance to its common equivalent, then I could create a set of statistics ideal for head-to-head evaluations, regardless of engine displacement, factory rider or privateer.  This is precisely what I set out to do when I created the Cross Linear Action Wave or what I like to refer to as the ROOST’R CLAW™ 

The Roost’r CLAW started as just an idea for bringing Supercross to my desktop and built around equal participation, sort of like the Monster Energy Cup all year.  If you’re anything like me, attending one race a year just isn’t enough and as a fan I wanted another way to participate.  The fantasy games I ran across use box scores as the basis for scoring so there was no way of getting around the redundancy so often found in racing; it became a contest of picking winners and losers against opponents with similar teams.  I concluded that scoring based on box scores will always have one inherent flaw and that is it will always be biased in favor of the point leaders and players will, to a large degree, gravitate to the point leaders.

This frustration led me to develop my own scoring system that ignores box scores, neutralizes timing, and normalizes 250 and 450 riders at the same time.  After many hours of laboring over my spreadsheets and studying video I noticed patterns emerge.  Calling on my experiences with applied mathematics and stochastic volatility I’ve come up with a system for scoring a riders’ individual performance.  I was focused on everything but the final result.  Using only the available information I first build a base sequence for each rider, then apply a set of functions to extract what I call a "TRAP" score.  From these results I'm able to create a unique set of scores that are as dynamic as the riders themselves.

I’ve decided to create my own games using these scores, one in particular I call Roost’r Trap®.  The Roost'r Trap is a unique collection of scores arranged in, well a trap.  It's a collection of scores arranged in a way perfect for head-to-head gaming, and can be wildly unpredictable.  It demands knowledge of the riders and their abilities, requires the player to understand the dynamics of a race, takes some luck too, after all this is Supercross and it has nothing to do with box scores.  

The concept refers to some complex mathematical theories but the results are actually quite simple.  I’ll continue to refine the system and at some point I hope to create an app.  Roostrtrap.com is still under construction but should be active by round 1 if you’d like to check in to see how it’s going.  I’ll have diagrams available in my next post so you can see some scoring samples.  Feel free to comment or find me on Twitter at @COdirtlife, you can also contact me directly at dirtlife.colorado@gmail.com.  Focus on the right numbers and Supercross will evolve for pros and fans alike.  The countdown has started so stay tuned... The Roost'r