The strategic jump-the order effect on winning “The Final Three” in long jump competitions

Karlsson Niklas () and Lunander Anders ()
Additional contact information
Karlsson Niklas: Örebro University School of Business, Örebro, Sweden
Lunander Anders: Örebro University School of Business, Örebro, Sweden

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2024, vol. 20, issue 3, 265-276

Abstract: The tournament rules for long jump competitions have changed in recent years. Today, only the three athletes with the best jumps from the five initial attempts are qualified to make an additional sixth jump – a format called The Final Three. In the first implemented version of The Final Three, the top athletes sequentially make one final jump, starting with the athlete ranked third place from the initial attempts. The athlete with the longest jump in this sixth attempt wins the competition, irrespective of achieved results in previous attempts. In this study, we analyze the effect of the athletes’ jump order on the probability of winning the competition within this first implemented version of The Final Three. We derive the final’s symmetric subgame perfect equilibrium and compute the corresponding equilibrium winning probabilities, given estimated distributional parameters from the Olympic long jumping final in Tokyo 2021. The modeling of the game is preceded by a development of a stochastic model for the outcome in long jumping. Our results indicate a last mover advantage, albeit small. Our model also reveals the importance of having a low variation in the approach run length and thinking strategically in this tournament format.

Keywords: long jumping; sequential game; order effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jqas-2022-0028 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:20:y:2024:i:3:p:265-276:n:1001

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jqas/html

DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2022-0028

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports is currently edited by Mark Glickman

More articles in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().