Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Pick Ten: Olympic Marathon Trials

We will kick things off for this year's Down the Backstretch fantasy contests with a big one - the Olympic Trials in the marathon.  By our count there are twenty-eight marathoners with Minnesota ties in the race, fourteen men and fourteen women.  This is a group that includes runners with legitimate Olympic dreams and others that just snuck under the Olympic trials qualifier time.  The race will be run in Houston, Texas on Saturday, January 14th at 8:00 A.M.

Pick Ten has a simple concept: predict the finish place for each of 10 Minnesota athletes at the Olympic Trials Marathon.  However, there is a bit of a twist.  You will choose places for Minnesota athletes among Minnesota athletes only. We will only score the fourteen Minnesota men and fourteen Minnesota women that we have indicated.  You will score points for each athlete that scores at or above the finish place you predict for them, following the 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 scoring system.

For example: If you pick Katie McGregor to place first in the women's race, and she places first among Minnesota women, you get 10 points. If you pick McGregor to place first and she finishes second, you get zero points. If you pick McGregor to finish third in the race and she places first, second or third, you get 8 points, since that's the place you picked her for.

To play Pick Ten, cut and paste the list of names/events below into an e-mail and add your place predictions -- 1st or 2nd or 3rd...10th. Send your predictions by 8:00 A.M. CST on Saturday, January 14th to DtBFantasy [AT] gmail [DOT] com. Make sure your full name is in the e-mail. As with our Yes/No contests, we don't offer any prizes, so no one needs to fear running afoul of NCAA or other anti-gambling regulations.

We'll announce the winner of this week's contest and compile results of all of the year's Pick Ten contests to name a grand champion for 2012.

Pick 10 ... Olympic Marathon Trials:

Katie McGregor:
Kara Goucher:
Jenna Boren:
Meghan Peyton:
Leah Thorvilson:
Matt Gabrielson:
Josh Moen:
Chris Erichsen:
Luke Watson:
Michael Reneau:

Here are a few links to help you make your picks ...

USATF lists all the entries and their qualifying times.
Down the Backstretch lists the Minnesota athletes in the race.
An update on Josh Moen.
Runners World Olympic Trials Cheat Sheet.
- An article about Kara Goucher.
- Team USA Minnesota Press Release.

Good luck!

This is the first contest of the year so all standings will reset.  Last year, Bryan Tolcser won the Pick 10 contest and Mike Henderson topped the field for Yes/No.

For full standings of both contests, please visit DtB Fantasy Corner.

5 comments:

Chad said...

So do we pick places for the 10 athletes you have listed or do we choose or own 10 athletes from the list of 28?

If we have to use the 10 athletes you have listed, how do the other 18 Minnesota athletes come into play? Do they just knock the 10 down the rankings?

How do you score across genders? Are you ranking them on their finish place regardless of gender?

Doug said...

Sorry for any confusion...

- Pick the places for the athletes I have listed
- The other 18 MN athletes can displace the 10 that you are picking on
- We will score each gender separately

For example - there will be 14 MN men in the race. From the results we will pull out the MN athletes and score them 1 - 14. You are predicting where you believe they will finish among the 14. (although you only receive points for places 1 - 10).

Hopefully I didn't confuse everyone further with this explanation...

Scott Meier said...

I'm still confused about the gender thing. You said that the genders will be scored separately. There are five men and five women. How do you rank 1-10 if there are only 5 runners (in two races), because you'll have a first place male and a first place female? Or are you now looking at the overall finishing place then, i.e. 21st place in the women's race beats 22nd place in the men's race?

Doug said...

Scott - I think that you have it correct except that you are not ranking the athletes 1 - 10, you are predicting his/her place among the 14 athletes of the same gender.
You might predict that Matt Gabrielson will finish 2nd among the MN men and that Katie McGregor will finish 2nd among the MN women.

A sample might look like this:

Katie McGregor:2
Kara Goucher: 1
Jenna Boren: 8
Meghan Peyton:3
Leah Thorvilson: 8
Matt Gabrielson: 2
Josh Moen: 4
Chris Erichsen: 5
Luke Watson: 6
Michael Reneau:9

Scott Meier said...

Got it. Thanks! I'm excited to watch the race online tomorrow!