Re: reverse handicapping of third task?

David Sueme wrote: 
In GOF, the champions ahead on points go into the maze first - and the
object of the game is to find something in the middle before the
others.  First to get to it wins.

This seems quite contrary to the usual race scenario, where the horse
established as the fastest is handicapped with the most weight.

So is there some explanation as to why Fleur has to wait?

The one explanation that occurs to me is that the extablished leaders
will clear out obstacles and the weaker players will have easier going
by that.  However, this assumes that the maze is rather limited in
scope.  Harry's musing that Hagrid will have plenty of interesting
nasties to contribute to the project refelcts the contrary view that
there will be ample problems to go around. Also note that Harry and
Cedric don't really clear things away for each other until the very end
of the quest.

So I wonder, with some trepridation, just what JKR said about this in
the BBC special/web chat or whatever... and is her answer entirely
arbitrary or does it make sense in the context of the books?

Tasks 1 and 2 are subjectively judged, where a Champion's overall score is a summation of the scores of all of the judged. But task 3 is different. There are no judges or scores in task 3; the winner is simply the person who reaches the Cup first.

Therefore, you *must* set things up so that the points leaders go first...it's the only logical way. That's the entire purpose of the points system of the first two tasks; other than that they're meaningless. If the points had the opposite function--that is, the strongest competitors were handicapped--it would essentially mean that a Champion could purposely get zero points in each task, and start the winner-takes-all 3rd task with a huge advantage.

--
Efren Irizarry, II
.

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