Grand Slam — three-tier podium plus a WR in one event

Person

A (person, event) qualifies as a "Grand Slam" when four things hold at once: a final-round podium at a World Championship (WC), a final-round podium at the person's Continental Championship, a final-round podium at their National Championship, and at least one WR (single or average) at some point in their career in that event.

The bar stacks — sustained world-top form plus winning at home and on the continent, with a moment of literally being fastest on Earth. The onlyFirst=1 toggle further restricts to people whose three podiums were all gold (pos=1) — the "all-gold" slam.

By the numbers

3 + 1

Tiers

WC + continental + national podium, plus any WR

Events covered

Computed independently per active event

pos ≤ 3

Podium criterion

Finals only — `round_type_id` in c/f

1 d

API cache

/v1/wca/grand-slam served with 24h Cache-Control

Data source

CI reads results + championships + eligible_country_iso2s_for_championship from the WCA dump, then folds them into wca_grand_slam keyed by (wca_id, event_id). Championships split three ways: world, leading-underscore continent codes, and ISO2 country codes; multi-country championships (e.g. greater_china) resolve via the eligibility table. The server only reads PG.

sql

SELECT gs.wca_id, gs.event_id, gs.best_value, gs.avg_value,
       gs.has_wr, gs.is_only_first,
       gs.world_champ_comp_id, gs.world_champ_pos,
       gs.continental_champ_comp_id, gs.continental_champ_pos,
       gs.national_champ_comp_id, gs.national_champ_pos,
       p.name AS person_name
FROM wca_grand_slam gs
JOIN wca_persons p ON p.wca_id = gs.wca_id
WHERE gs.event_id = ?
ORDER BY gs.best_value NULLS LAST;

Algorithm / pipeline

Filter to final-round podium rows

Keep results rows where round_type_id ∈ {c, f} and pos BETWEEN 1 AND 3. Heats / semis don't count — must be finals.

Route each podium to one of three tiers

compId ∈ worldChampComps → WC tier; continentalChampComps.get(compId) === person's continent → continental tier; nationalChampComps.get(compId) === person's country (or the multi-country set contains it) → national tier. If the person podiums multiple times in the same tier, keep the row with the smallest pos.

Separately sweep for WR

Any row for the same (person, event) with regional_single_record = "WR" or regional_average_record = "WR" flips has_wr = TRUE. No round or comp-type restriction — one WR is enough, forever.

Four-way intersection → Grand Slam

A row lands in wca_grand_slam only if worldChampPos / contChampPos / natChampPos are all non-null and hasWrSingle || hasWrAvg. Then is_only_first = (worldChampPos = 1 AND contChampPos = 1 AND natChampPos = 1).

Enrich at request time

/v1/wca/grand-slam?event=&onlyFirst= filters wca_grand_slam by event_id plus optional is_only_first / has_wr, joins wca_persons / wca_competitions / wca_countries for names + iso2, and returns up to 5000 rows sorted by best_value.

Caveats & edges

Continental tier is decided by the person's current nationality → continent (persons.country_id → countries.continent_id), not by where the comp was held. People who changed citizenship may "re-qualify".
Podium uses raw pos (WCA official placement); we don't recompute from values. A DNF'd average with pos = 3 still counts.
Multi-country championships (e.g. greater_china) resolve via eligible_country_iso2s_for_championship; podiums by TW / HK / MO competitors at China Championship credit their national tier.
onlyFirst does not require the three golds to be in the same year — across a career is fine.

Grand Slam — three-tier podium plus a WR in one event

By the numbers

Data source

Algorithm / pipeline

Caveats & edges

Related stats & links