Repechage (Origin French: repêchage, lit. re-fishing), meaning "to rescue" or "to save", is a practice in knock-out or elimination contests that allows who failed to meet qualifying standards by a small margin to continue on to the next round.
To understand this better, in track field athletics, automatic qualification for the next round is given to the best competitors in each heat. Other competitors with the best times may also qualify for the next round indirectly as "fastest losers" as a result of the repechage. If a particular heat was significantly faster than the others, the repechage spots can be all taken by athletes from that heat. In field athletics, automatic qualification for the next round depends on meeting or surpassing a specified minimum result. The remaining qualification spots (if any) are given in order to the best results.
In karate, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling tournaments, single elimination brackets are used to determine the two athletes who will compete in the final match for first and second place. The repechage bracket is built by selecting all of the athletes who were knocked out by the finalists and building brackets to determine third place. Repechage addresses the possibility of two top competitors meeting in an early round, allowing the loser a chance to compete for a bronze medal. This is exactly what happened to Sushil Kumar at Beijing on 20th August 2008 at the Olympic Games.
In fact, earlier in the day Reuters has reported Sushil's elimination and how medal hopes rested on the repechage. Sushil came up with an incredible show, beating Doug Schwab (3-1) of the United States, Albert Batyrov (3-1) of Belarus and, finally, the losing semi-finalist, Leonid Spiridonov of Kazakhstan in the repechage rounds - all under an hour-to earn his slice of history. Repechage is especially common in Sailing. Sushil went on to othe second Indian wrestler after Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav, who won a bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Games, to win an Olympic medal. One wonders whether Jadhav too had won the bronze on the repechage.
Source for meaning of repechage: Wikipedia
1 comment:
This is a great post! I had no idea what it is until today!
This post brings back good memories, i completely forgot Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav won a bronze in the 1952 Helsinki Games. 1952 was a great year i remember how much i enjoyed the Helsinki games!
I remember Helsinki had been earlier given the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were canceled due to World War II.
Anyway, Thank you very much for this post! I cannot believe i did not know what repechage round was until today!
-Will
Tv wall brackets
Post a Comment