From the better-late-than-never files, here are the results of our 2012 Western States Prediction Contest. Before we move on, we wanted to thank Mitchell Goodman for being the programming brains behind this contest.
We’re only posting place-specific rankings through the top 3 after that we didn’t use the master’s-pick 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, and who did the best at picking the men’s and women’s fields individually.
The Winners
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!
Chris Payton (9 points) wins a pair of Montrail shoes, Mountain Hardwear Ultrafuel/Pace(r) bottom, and a Mountain Hardwear Way2Cool performance shirt. On the men’s side, Chris has Timothy Olson and Ryan Sandes reversed, picked Dave Mackey correctly for fourth, picked Dylan Bowman one spot too high, and Neal Gorman too spots too high. For the ladies, Chris correctly picked Ellie Greenwood for the win and Aliza Lapierre for third. He picked Nikki Kimball one spot too high and Krissy Moehl two spots too high, while he was one spot too low with Tina Lewis. Chris correctly picked Dave Mackey and Nikki Kimball for the masters win, thus breaking his tie with the another 9-point scorer…- Jonathan Seiber (9 points) wins a pair of Montrail shoes and a Mountain Hardwear Ultrafuel/Pace(r) bottom. Despite having the same point total as Chris, Jonathan incorrectly picked Tsuyoshi Kaburaki and Meghan Arbogast for the masters wins. Interestingly, in his overall picks, he did have Mackey and Kimball as his top masters runners. Jonathan was dead on in picking Ellie Greenwood (1st woman), Rory Bosio (2nd woman), and Dave Mackey (4th man).
- Leah Fein (10 points) wins a pair of Montrail recovery shoes and a Montrail running hat as the sole person with 10 points. Apparently, Greenwood and Mackey were gimmes as Leah also had them correct, as well. She also correctly picked Amy Sproston as eighth woman. It’s worth noting that Leah just placed fifth at the Hardrock 100!
The Overall Contest Field
While there were a few more extremely low scores in 2011 than in 2012, the overall competition… from the airchair ultramarathoners keeps getting better and better. Here’s a breakdown of the number of folks tallying 50 or fewer points other the past four years: 2009 – 46, 2010 – 107, 2011 – 274, 2012 – 446. It’s a good thing we don’t give away silver buckles or we’d be broke!
Our annual group-think predictions have done pretty well in the past. The past two years, those predictions ended up with 20 points, which placed in the top sixth and top third of the contestants in 2010 and 2011, respectively. This year’s Group-Think Predictions stepped things up a notch, tallying a mere 14 points. Only 24 individual contestants – 5% of the entrants – picked better than the group as a whole. No, the group think predictions aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty darn good. This year, the group think did much better with the men’s field (4 points) than the women’s field (10 points), while it did slightly better with the women’s field (9 points for the women vs. 11 points for the men) each of the past two years.
Here are the full results.
[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
A pair of contests – Antoine Calvez and Paul Turcke – who finished just out of the money with 11 total points tallied just two points apiece on the men’s side of the action. Calvez correctly predicted Sandes (2nd), Bowman (7th), and Jorge Maravilla (8th), while picking both Dave Mackey and Ian Sharman one place too low. Turcke matched Calvez’s picking prowess with exact picks on Timothy Olson (1st), Sandes, and Zeke Teirnan (6th), while picking Nick Clark one spot too low and Joe Uhan one spot too high.
Women’s Predictions
Despite not getting a single exact match out of his top four spots, Thomas Conway was the best in picking the women’s field with two points. He exactly picked Krissy Moehl (4th), Nikki Kimball (5th), and Amy Sproston (8th) while he picked both Ellie Greenwood and Rory Bosio one spot too low.
Final Words
Thanks to the more than 450 individuals who took part in the contest… that’s more than the total number of entrants in Western States! 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.
