How ratings work
The Flagline Rating is a skill rating for every athlete, built only from finishing orders: who finished ahead of whom in each heat, semi and final. There are no times in lifesaving results, so placings are what we have, and a rating makes the most of them. It is what the rankings are sorted by.
What it is
- Every heat is a set of head-to-head results: finishing 3rd of 8 means you beat five people and were beaten by two.
- Beating someone rated higher than you moves your rating up more than beating someone rated lower. Losing to someone rated much lower costs more.
- There are separate ratings for Beach (flags, sprint, beach run), Swim (surf swim, run-swim-run), Board, Ski and Multi (ironman, board-run-board), plus an Overall rating across all of them.
- Girls, boys, women and men are rated separately, and so are Nippers, Juniors, Open and Masters. Relays and team events are not rated.
- The number runs from 0 to 1 000. A new athlete starts around 300; a typical established athlete sits around 450–500, and the best in a group reach 750 or more.
A cautious number, with a ±
Behind every rating are two numbers: our best guess of an athlete's skill, and how unsure we still are. The rating you see is the cautious end of that range, so it only climbs as the evidence builds up. The ± next to it shows the uncertainty: it starts wide and shrinks with every race.
Why heats count less
Athletes often ease off once they know they are through to the next round, so a heat tells us less than a final:
| Round | Counts as |
|---|---|
| Heat | 0.6 |
| Quarter-final or semi-final | 0.8 |
| Final (and straight finals) | 1.0 |
Competition tiers
Racing well at a bigger competition counts a little more:
| Competition | Counts as |
|---|---|
| Club carnivals and series | 1.0 |
| Provincial championships | 1.15 |
| SA championships | 1.3 |
| Inter-Provincials | 1.3 |
These weights change how far one race moves a rating, not who is better: making them 20% bigger or smaller barely changes the rankings.
Provisional ratings
Until an athlete has 10 rated heats in a discipline group, their rating there is provisional: there isn't enough racing yet to trust it, and it can move a lot. Provisional ratings are labelled everywhere and are left out of the rankings unless you choose “Show provisional”.
Moving up an age group
When an athlete moves up (U13 to U14, U17 to U19, Junior to Open), their rating comes with them: the estimate of their skill stays the same, but we become less sure of it, because they are now racing older, stronger athletes. So their rating often dips a little at first, then settles within a few competitions. The same small widening happens at the start of every season, for the off-season.
Why did my rating drop?
A rating moves after every competition, and a drop almost always has one of these reasons:
- You finished behind people rated below you. Say Sam (rating 620) finishes 6th of 8 in a Board final, behind two athletes rated about 540. The model expected Sam ahead of them, so Sam drops, perhaps to around 605. Finishing 2nd behind the top-rated athlete would have moved Sam up instead.
- A new season or a new age group. The rating widens its ± (see above), and since the number you see is the cautious end, it dips until you race again.
- Disqualified or did not finish. A DSQ or DNF counts as finishing last in that heat. A DNS (did not start) is simply left out.
Each athlete's rating chart shows the rating before and after every competition, so you can see exactly where it moved.
Does it work?
Before we showed ratings, we tested them: using only earlier seasons, how well does each method predict the finishing order of the next season's finals? The rating predicted the 2025/26 and 2024/25 finals better than simply using each athlete's average finishing position from the season before, across about 1 800 finals. The gain is largest for athletes with little recent racing, and it is modest for athletes who race a lot, where a plain average is already a good guide. Beach events, where flags is a knockout, are the hardest to predict.
What it isn't
- It is not a time, and it can't compare athletes who never race each other's groups.
- It is not a selection ranking. Selectors use their own criteria.
- Juniors are shown as first name and surname initial, as everywhere on Flagline.
Every other number on Flagline is defined in the numbers reference. Spotted something odd? Tell us via the About page.