I'm trying to develop an alternative rating system for athletic results. We're all aware of the traditional first past the post rating system for races. Think of the 100m final in the Olympics. First gets gold, second silver, etc. This system only benefits the top three.
In my system, there is a series/league of races, where all eight runners race eight times against each other. I want to consider the age category and standard of the runners as well as the final position when rating their individual performance per race. Since we record the results, previous results can also be considered. The aim of the rating system is to keep runners at the lower end of the table competitive in later races, while also raising the bar to elite runners as they progress through the series.
My current thinking is that at the start of each race, each runner is assigned 1 point. In terms of distributing points after a race, i'm thinking each runner can get gain or lose .1 points for each category we rate.
For race position, the winner beats all others, so gets .1 * 7 and ends up with 1.7 points. The slowest, is dropped to .3 points.
We then look at the age category, and same rule is applied, if you beat someone younger you gain .1 and they lose .1 of a point.
Once all the categories have been processed, we position the runners based on the points.
In the second race, the same process happens. An extra category is now considered, we compare the runner points against their last result. Lets assume the same runner wins the first two races, they have the same points, but because they didn't beat their previous points, they lose a point to the slowest person.
The same process repeats for all races, until the end, when the most consistent runner is identified. I'm wondering has anybody come across anything like this in other sport ranking systems? Am i making this too complicated?
-- EDIT 1 --
Rather than giving each runner one point at the start of each, and then transfering the points between runners based the categories, an alternative is to say each category has a set of points, and then divide these points to each set of runners that match the criteria.
This is similar to a soccer league, where each match has 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw or zero for losing. The teams compete to win the points in a category.
-- EDIT 2 --
I found this topic called the Swiss Model which is used for chess ranking. While this system assumes a player vs player competition and a division of points based on the result. I think this can be extended to eight runners against eight runners in an event, we then consider each individual result between the runners.
-- EDIT 3 --
The IRB World Rankings and its explaination seem to match what i'm trying to. Each runner starts with 40 points, based in the size of wins/defeats we transfer points between runners. A slow runner having one good race would take a lot of points from the fastest runner. Running slow isn't rewarded either.