Host City: The Hammer Series is a great brand name – where did the name come from?

Julien Ternisien: The name was developed jointly by Infront and its partner Velon, the company uniting the top 11 UCI World Tour Teams, together with a leading London based agency.

We looked for a brand name that would immediately resonate with cyclists, reflect the race format and work internationally.

All serious cyclists know what it is to be hammering down the road or when a rider drops the hammer and then goes all out. It reflects the impact racing style of the series and translates well across many languages.

Host City: How does the format of the event differ from other cycling competitions?

Julien Ternisien: Firstly, it is a team versus team format, rather than individual winners.  Although cycling is a team sport, normally an individual winner stands on the podium. For the Hammer Series it is the team standing on the podium.

The other important aspect is that it is short and action packed. It is two hours of racing per day over three days including the Hammer Climb, Hammer Sprint and Hammer Chase.

The Hammer Climb and Hammer Sprint are races in which riders will attempt to win points for their team. Fans are able to see the top riders in the world sprinting against each other on each lap – approximately 10 times – during the Hammer Climb and Sprint. 

Each team’s finishing positions from days one and two are combined to determine their starting place on day three’s Hammer Chase, a team pursuit against the clock with the leading team starting first and the other team chasing them.

Host City: Who is the rights holder to Hammer Series and what is Infront’s role in delivering the event?

Julien Ternisien: Velon Ltd and Infront are the rights holders of the series, partnering with local race organisers on the events.

Host City: The event is part of the UCI Europe tour - what is your relationship with the UCI and how do you help to further their aims?

Julien Ternisien: Both Infront and Velon have a strong relationship with the UCI and we see them as our partner in the development of the Hammer Series

We have engaged with the UCI from the outside and have worked closely with them on the development of the format and the regulations necessary to facilitate this new form of racing.

All Hammer races, as well as the series, are sanctioned by the UCI.

We believe the Hammer Series is a fantastic race series for the globalisation of cycling, which is a key objective of the UCI. This new format of short form, action packed racing offers a unique opportunity to introduce cycling to new cycling markets.

This article first appeared in the Summer issue of Host City magazine

The number of sports events worldwide has been growing rapidly since the beginning of the 21^st century. And with new markets comes the appetite to create more competitions, or redesign existing competitions.

Right holders, cities and companies invest large amounts of resources from early stages in feasibility studies and more, but one thing is usually left off the table – even though it is crucial for making a tournament profitable: the competition format.

Since the original Olympics Games in Ancient Greece, tournament formats have remained the same: Round-Robin Groups and Direct Elimination (Play-Offs). Practically every competition world-wide that involves two competitors in each match uses these formats, even though it has caused several issues, supposedly unfixable – such as score-manipulations, low competitiveness and above all an inability to optimise number of participants, matches and match-days.

What do we mean by this inability to optimise the number of participants? Well, try to come up with a short tournament that has 10 competitors. Can’t think of any? Neither can I. Yet Googling the phrase “Top 10” shows 350 million results, while the phrases “Top 8” and “Top 12” returns around 20 million.

Obviously branding an event as a Top 10 would then be much more beneficial for all the stakeholders. Then why don’t we see more tournaments of 10 competitors? Probably because we can’t really imagine a tournament that doesn’t use the traditional format, so the number 10 is a “weird” number.

So in order to avoid having two groups of five teams, organisers opt to reduce the number of participants to eight as the ATP World Tour Final does (in a sport that is obsessed with Top 10 ranking), or increase the number of participants to 12, even at the expense of hurting the brand by including unattached teams, as Copa America does with Japan or Jamaica instead of just the 10 CONMEBOL teams.

There is an alternative. MatchVision, a game-changing company that helps federations and competition organisers to fulfil their competition objectives, has developed numerous simple, fair and transparent tournament formats that best fit the reality of the tournament, either new or re-branded.

Using innovation in formats, the parameters that define the competition (e.g. number of competitors, matches and match-per-competitor) are flexible, and changing one does not impose the other. For instance, increasing the ATP World Tour Finals to 10 players can be done without changing the number of matches-days or matches per player.

How would that tournament look like? There are several ways, but a simple example would be to divide players into two “zones”, instead of groups. Each player would face three opponents from the opposite zone, depending on previous ranking, and all players would be placed in one general standing. After everyone has played three matches, the best four players in the general standing would continue to the Semi-Final, with the first facing the fourth, and the second facing the third.

This simple system has many other benefits as well, such as a better tournament calendar that uses the first weekend of the tournament to its fullest, or having all players competing against all others, encouraging fans to follow all matches and not just the ones played by their favourites.

Another optimisation is the number of match-days. Under the groups format it is mathematically impossible to have an even number of match-days – a group of four teams would have three match-days, the same as a group of three teams, while having groups of five teams (or six teams) requires five match-days, and so on.

That is a death-blow to some competitions, due to issues such as the calendar and player endurance. Between 1987 and 1995 a tournament involving ex-players of World-Cup winning nations was played biennially, yet in spite of interest it ceased to exist. All recent attempts to create a similar tournament have failed for one major reason: finding players.

Very few important ex-players have shown willingness to join a tournament that would force them to play not less than three matches, not only due to the physical effort required but also due to time commitment of having to stay at least two weeks in the host nation. Yet with an innovative format that requires not less and not more than two match-days in the first round, and with the correct number of teams, this tournament could become a reality.

Last but not least, the competition format also affects the infrastructure costs of the tournament, not only due to the number of participants and matches but also the number of venues required and travel expenses. A multi-hosted event usually means long and numerous travels for competitors, fans and press. For instance, in the 2014 FIFA World Cup the United States national team travelled more than 10,000 miles inside Brazil alone. Yet with an optimised competition format, number of travels could be reduced to a minimum, even allowing smaller events to be held over few countries.

Whether you’re a rights holder, a city or a company looking to endorse a tournament, analysing the competition format is of your interest. With an innovative design, you could create a highly competitive tournament, deciding the number of participants, matches and match-days based on your requirements, breaking the restrictions imposed by the usage of traditional formats.

Itay Ingber is Chief Operating Officer of MatchVision

Take Modern Pentathlon and remove the dynamism of Swimming, the dexterity of Fencing and the heroism of Horse Riding. What do you have left?

What you have left is a sport with two disciplines, Running and Laser Shooting, and too big an audience to be counted.

A sport that can take place on a beach, in a park or in a city centre.

A sport where Olympians, beginners and veterans can test themselves on the same terrain, in the same conditions, with the same equipment and with the same sense of enjoyment through competition.

A sport whose compact format creates the possibility for organizing cities to enjoy extensive outreach and exposure, aligning sport with culture and entertainment.

What you have left is Laser-Run.

This sport, this new offspring of the core Olympic sport of Modern Pentathlon, was conceived in 2014 and born in 2015, when the 1st UIPM Laser-Run World Championships were held in the south of France.

There, in downtown Perpignan, the sun shone through the fountains to create a kaleidoscope effect in harmony with the diversity of the competitors: women, men, girls, boys, competing individually and in concert, all ages, nationalities and races.

Twelve months later, in the capital of Portugal, another armada of athletes - 421 from 22 countries - gathered once more to transmit the message that this is a sport for everyone, and that rule applies to spectators as well as athletes.

Perpignan 2015 and Lisbon 2016. The Laser-Run World Championships. Two disciplines, two cities, two success stories.

So why does this format work so well?

By common consent, for spectators the most gripping stage of a Modern Pentathlon competition is the Combined Event. The Run/Shoot. The climax.

Laser-Run is the Combined Event with the slate wiped clean. It is Modern Pentathlon stripped of the complications of water, epees and horses. Laser-Run is not about elegant posture on horseback or razor-like reflexes or continuity of stroke, it is back-to-basics sport and it pulls off the trick of generating a thrilling spectacle with a simple format.

Everyone starts at the same time and the winner is he or she who finishes first. The laws of combat are straightforward. Run smartly, conserve energy, pick up your pistol and don’t miss. Don’t get stuck on the range, or you will be left behind and there will be no second wind. No tired legs to hunt down.

It is a concept that marries the most attractive aspects of running and gaming. Laser-Run combines outdoor athleticism and electronic fun to offer the best of both worlds.

What more could an active young audience wish for?

Well, they might also wish to be able to try out their Laser-Run skills against their friends, and ultimately chase national and international titles, and they might wish to do this in front of their families and other spectators and receive the acclaim on the finish line that they see elite athletes enjoy on TV.

Dr Klaus Schormann, President of UIPM, says: “As we saw during the inauguration of this competition in Perpignan in 2015, and again in Lisbon in 2016, the combination of Running and Shooting which replicates the climax of a Modern Pentathlon competition creates its own exciting World Championships.

“The Laser-Run World Championships has been another big step for the development of Modern Pentathlon and UIPM Sports.”