Personal Handicap

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Personal Handicapping Adapted from the RTTC Method

To find the Current OBC personal handicaps, click	here

RTTC Personal Handicap Calculation

Since 2003, the Ottawa Bicycle CLub has offered a Personal-Handicap event in early September. This event is a competition that any club member has a chance to win since riders are given handicaps which are calculated from his/her fastest time over the most recent two seasons. The actual calculation is essentially the same as that devised by the British Cycling Time Trials organization (known until the year 2003 as the Road Time Trials Council or RTTC).

In general terms, an arbitrary base time is subtracted from a rider's best time. This difference is then reduced by a small percentage to determine the actual handicap. The rationale for this reduction is that the slower a rider goes, the easier it is to improve on race day.

RTTC Personal Handicap Calculation

The exact calculation is as follows (with example):

Rider's best performance since 1st January the previous year - 	22:49
Less the standard time for the distance - 	17:00
This yields the Gross Handicap - 	5:49
Less 4 seconds per complete minute of Gross Handicap - 	0:20
5:49 . 20 seconds - 	5:29
Less 1 second for each complete 15 seconds of Gross Handicap - 	0:03
Final handicap - 	5:26

This gives the handicap, which will be used to determine the rider's effective time on race day. It should be noted that the Cycling Time Trials organization uses 17:00 as the standard time for a 10-mile time trial, which would correspond to approximately 15:50 for 15 km. However (apart from possibly some small round-off differences) the standard time really doesn't affect the ordering of the results, so we decided to just use 17:00 as our standard time as well.

Official Notes from 2003

If a rider has no performances for 15km during the last two seasons, there will be no handicap.

If a rider's best time is lower than the standard time, this calculation will result in a negative handicap!

Note that because every rider has a chance to win, there are no Male/Female awards - just medals to the top 3 overall.

Amendments for 2004

Riders had to complete at least 3 OBC 15km events (OTT or WTT) beforehand in the year of the Personal Handicap event if they were to receive a non-zero handicap, but they were handicapped on only their best OTT 15km performance!

Amendments for 2005

Riders had complete at least 3 OBC 15km events (OTT or WTT) beforehand in the year of the Personal Handicap event if they were to receive a non-zero handicap, but they were handicapped on only their best OBC (OTT or WTT) 15km performance!

Amendments for 2006

Only the OBC events on the Rockliffe Parkway counted towards the handicap - In particular the 9th Line Time Trial results were ignored. [an error occurred while processing this directive]