2011 Western States 100 Prediction Contest Results

Here’s iRunFar’s penultimate post about the 2011 Western States 100 and it’s the highly anticipated results to our 2011 Western States Prediction Contest. Before we move on, we wanted to thank Mitchell Goodman for being the programming brains behind this contest.

As were still tweaking the master’s results, we’re only posting place-specific rankings through the top 10 after that we didn’t use the tie breakers. (For a refresher on the rules, check out the contest entry page.) Read on to find out who won the contest and what they win, who did the best at picking the men’s and women’s fields individually, and our on observations on the contest.

The Winners
Every year the prognosticators who make their picks in this contest keep getting better. Two years ago, 16 points won the contest. With the great weather and high finishing rate this year, 16 points would put one in a tie for 57th! Clearly, merely picking guaranteed finishers was not the strategy for this year. You needed to know the actual placings of runners. Even last year’s excellent winning total of 10 points would only have been good enough for a fourth place tie this year.

No more waiting… except to thank Montrail and Mountain Hardwear for providing the great prizes for the contest. Without them, the only thing to come out of the contest would be bragging rights! On to the winners!

1. Andy Jones-Wilkins (7 points) wins a pair of Montrail shoes, a Mountain Hardwear Refueler/Pace(r) bottom, and Mountain Hardwear Wicked Lite performance shirt. Could there be a more fitting winner than this WS100 obsessed, SEVEN-straight time top 10 finisher? We don’t think so! Andy didn’t pick a single men’s finisher in his correct position, but picked five that were each off by one. For the men, his scoring picks were Kilian Jornet for second, Jez Bragg for third, Tsuyoshi Kaburaki for fourth, Graham Cooper for sixth, and himself for eighth. While not scoring, he was only two places off for Nick Clark (picking him fifth) and three places off for Ian Sharman (picking him 7th). On the women’s side, he correctly picked Kami Semick (second), Tracy Garneau (fourth), Rory Bosio (fifth), and Amy Sproston (eighth). His fifth scoring pick was two places off with Ellie Greenwood as third.
2. Jay Thomson (8 points) wins a pair of Montrail shoes and a Mountain Hardwear Refueler/Pace(r) bottom. Jay correctly predicted both winners, Kilian Jornet and Ellie Greenwood. He also nailed his picks for Nick Clark, Kami Semick, and Nikki Kimball.
3. Bob Lapanja (9 points) wins a pair of Montrail recovery shoes and a Montrail Hat. Bob had four perfect picks: Nick Clark, Ellie Greenwood, Kami Semick, and Tracy Garneau. His two other scoring women’s picks were one point off – Rory Bosio for sixth and Meghan Arbogast (8th).

The Overall Contest Field
To give you a sense of the improvement in the contest, in 2009 46 folks scored fewer than 50 points, while 107 did so last year. This year, an incredible 274 folks did! The results are found below.

[A note to email subscribers only: If you can't see these results, you need to click on the article title in your email to view the article in a web browser.]

Men’s Predictions
No one picked the men’s field better than a dude named Chris (cmding6) who scored only 2 points! The beauty of this contest (and Chris’s luck) is that three picks drop… so his three DNFs – Geoff Roes, Hal Koerner, and Ryan Burch – didn’t hurt him. Nick Clark, Tsuyoshi Kaburaki, and Timothy Olson (a rare pick) dead on. He was one off on Kilian Jornet (picked him second) and Andy Jones-Wilkins (eighth). Note this is a rare case of an increasing point total this year. Last year, the winner scored 1 men’s point.

Women’s Predictions
John Medinger, a past overall winner of the contest, tied with Scotty Railton and John Cash for the women’s win with 1 point. That’s a single point improvement over last year’s winner, Budd Ring, and one point away from perfection. Scotty was perfect with Ellie (1st), Kami (2nd), Tracy (4th) and Rory (5th) with his only scoring pick was Meghan Arbogast for sixth. Cash perfectly picked the top three – Ellie, Kami, and Nikki as well as Aliza Lapierre while picking Tracy Garneau one place off (5th). Tropical John (Medinger), well he picked the quadfecta with ladies – Ellie, Kami, Nikki, and Tracy. Picking Becky Wheeler for eighth was TJ’s lone point.

Observations

• Well, this year’s Group-Think Predictions didn’t do nearly as well as last year. Correct that, they did precisely as well as last year – scoring 20 points both years and in an identical manner – 11 points for the men and 9 for the women! Last year, that was good enough to beat 5 out of 6 entrants. This year, it was a hair out of the top third.
• Just like last year, five men’s Top 10 finishers in this year’s race entered the contest. As with last year, all five picked themselves to finish higher than they did. Like last year, two were within one place. After that, the three others were two, four, and six spots off. One woman in the Top 10 was two picks off for herself… and, in interesting contrast to the men’s field, she picked herself two positions below her final placing.
• Seven folks correctly picked both master’s winners, Kami Semick and Tsuyoshi Kaburaki.
• In a drastic improvement over the past two years, I had five spots dead on Kilian Jornet, Nick Clark, Ellie Greenwood, Nikki Kimball, and Amy Sproston. (Last year, I only correctly picked Nikki for third.)

Final Words
Thanks to the nearly 350 individuals who took part in the contest. We had a lot of fun bringing it to you and hope you had a lot of fun participating. We hope to bring you more fun contests in the future.

Thus concludes our analysis of this year’s Western States 100 (except for my own race report). Now where did we put that list of 2012 entries… ;-)

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Filed under Contests, Races · Tagged with Western States 100

Bryon Powell is the Editor-in-Chief of iRunFar.com, which he founded five years ago. Also the author of Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons and a contributing editor at Trail Runner magazine, he's quickly approaching 10 years as an ultrarunner and 20 years as a trail runner. These days he calls Park City, Utah and its trails home.
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