I was watching some Olympic speed skating. There was an event called team pursuit. It’s pretty simple.
Two teams of three people each start on opposite sides of an oval track. They start at the same time. They have to race the same number of laps. In this event I believe it was six laps. All three of the team members have to cross the line to stop the clock. Since the teams start on opposite sides of the track, they also end on opposite sides. Because the race is so short, and the teams are so good, they will not interact with each other on the track. It actually doesn’t matter what time you get in this race. What matters is that you are faster than the team you are racing against at this exact moment.
When I tuned in they were in the semi-final round. There were four teams remaining, so there were two semi-final races. The first and fourth seeded teams raced each other and the second and third seeded teams raced. Winners of these races would win a silver medal because they would advance to the gold medal race. Losers of these semi-final races would proceed to the bronze medal race with a 50% chance of a bronze medal and 50% chance of no medal at all.
Every semi-final race between a first and fourth seed that I saw, men and women, was a farce. The fourth seed started out with a strong lap or two, but the first seed quickly caught up. Once it became apparent to the slower team that they could not win, they took their foot of the gas and skated lazily. The first place team, once they had a significant margin, also took it easy and glided to victory.
They did this because the losing team has no reason to burn themselves out racing hard just to lose. That would hurt their chances in the bronze medal race which was coming up soon. Then of course in turn, the team that was already likely to win gold becomes even more likely to win gold as they don’t have to try very hard either.
Meanwhile, I saw one semi-final race between second and third seeds. These teams raced hard. It was much closer. I didn’t see the finals, but I would not be surprised to find that both of these teams lose in the gold and bronze medal races due to being tired out from the semi-final. Of course, whichever team won that race would be quite happy with their silver medal.
IMO it is rather silly to structure a non-interactive race in a tournament format. Can you imagine if the 100m dash if it was a series of 1v1 races? Everyone would just let Usain Bolt win easy and then he just has to beat one very tired person in the gold medal race? If the teams were racing side by side, and some amount of interference between them was permitted, then I could see it making sense. Otherwise, it is kind of a joke.
To fix this team pursuit they should just have every team race alone on the track. The team with the best time wins. If they really want to make it a little fancier, they can have each team race a few times and then take their best time, combined two best times, combine all their times, whatever. The only justification I can imagine for the current format is that it is a bit more exciting for spectators to see two teams race simultaneously than it is to see many teams all race independently. They also can’t have every team racing at once because that is too many people speed skating in a small oval, almost guaranteeing crashes and injuries.
That said, I was quite pleased to see that all the teams recognized the correct game theory of the situation, and acted appropriately. Everyone did what they should do in order to give themselves the best chance of the best result given the rules. I just think maybe those rules should change.