Lucky Loser

Lucky Loser (English: happy loser ) is a technical term in sports. He refers to a player who loses in qualifying, but still remain part of the competition.

Reasons for remaining in the competition

The reasons for such a moving up can be very different. Originally it was only around the moving up in case of failure of a qualified participant (eg due to injury). Meanwhile, competition systems are common in which automatically get the " best losers". An example of this is the knock-out mode at the Four Hills Tournament.

Selection of moving up loser

Lucky- Loser regulations also include provisions on how the " best losers" are determined.

  • In the Four Hills Tournament in addition to the 25 winners of the first passage back to the five best point losers.
  • In tennis, the world rankings for the determination of the " best loser " was originally prevail. To prevent tampering, is now at Grand Slam tournaments no longer automatically selected the best-placed players, but calculated from the four best losers in the last qualifying round substitutes by lot.

Limiting cases

Similar procedures exist in many different sports, although not in every case, the name Lucky Loser is in use.

  • In athletics, the starting fields of throwing and jumping events will be made ​​up to twelve athletes when fewer participants achieve the required qualifying performance.
  • In the European Football Championship 1992, the team of Yugoslavia was not admitted as a reaction to the prevailing military conflict for the tournament. Instead, started in qualifying the Yugoslavs losing team from Denmark and eventually became European champion.
  • Tennis
  • Four Hills Tournament
532694
de