Which event predicts the winner in HG

[Sqeezemasterflash]

I'm crazy bored at work, so I took the results of a bunch of the pro games in 2007, and did a little analysis. I went though and assigned a place to each even result, then compared those with the overall placings of the athletes. I was essentially looking for an event that has the highest degree of carryover to overall success.

Here's what I found. The percentages represent the frequency that the athlete who took first in that event won the overall games.

56WFD - 79.17%

28WFD - 79.17%

22# Hammer - 77.27%

WOB - 72%

16# Hammer - 68.42%

Sheaf - 46.67%

Caber - 44%

Braemar Stone - 35.71%

Open Stone - 28%

These are just quick percentages done in Excel. I'm hoping to do a more thorough correlation later. I was surprised that caber was so low.

Any thoughts?

[goergen1]

That's pretty interesting. I know Bert says that once you get good at the Heavy Weight the other events get better as well. So there might be something to that.

[Bert Sorin]

wow, that is super interesting, thanks for posting. I had always said that transplant shotputters usually throw far in the stone, and not so good in all the other stuff. Hammer throwers seem to take to the HG the best, seeing that the wfd and hammer are really similar, the have a good pull from the wt room, that helps WOB, and they are ecent at stone, because anyone who has throw hammer far, knows decent form in shot put too. Oh yeah, when my 56 wfd went up(which I used to work all the time), all my other events shot up too.

Again, great post. Thanks.

[Bert Sorin]

Also, take into account that in Am games, if there is a cut, they use the stone and 56wfd for the qualifier events. So it is smart to get good at those. ;)

[Sqeezemasterflash]

Ran a correlation on these numbers. This shows slightly different information. A higher correlation means that the event has a greater impact on the win. A correlation of 1 would mean that winning the event would guarantee a win in the competition.

28WFD 0.92
22Hammer 0.87
56WFD 0.86
16Hammer 0.85
Open 0.76
Caber 0.75
Braemar 0.73
WFH 0.67
Sheaf 0.56


A few diffences here, possibly related to the fact that so many of the results in WFH and Sheaf had to be coded as a tie, since only the heights were available, rather than the placings.

[Bert Sorin]

wow, you are smart. :D keep up the data, that is some good stuff.