Q Points claims to be a more robust system than the widely used existing formats, Sinclair Points and the International Weightlifting Federation’s (IWF) Robi Points, both of which are based on current world records.

Sinclair and Robi scoring systems are used in national championships and other open-weight competitions throughout the world when there are not enough entries for a typical event featuring up to 20 weight categories.

Sinclair and Robi are also used to determine "best lifter" awards at major IWF competitions.

Point scoring methods will become ever more important during the IWF’s ongoing programme of reforms and modernisation because innovative events such as street weightlifting and mixed team competitions are "open weight".

At the outset the Q Points scoring formula, which is free to use and available here, is based on results at all IWF and continental Olympic qualifying competitions between 2017 and 2021.

The Q Points team, which includes academics, athletes, coaches and National Federation officials, recommends that the formula should be updated after every four-year Olympic cycle "for stability purposes and appropriate long-term comparisons."

Led by the German professor of statistics Marianne Huebner - a double world champion in Masters weightlifting who was coached by the United States Olympian Fred Lowe - they analysed more than 3,500 results in that four-year period, 1,973 from men and 1,586 from women.

Performances by known dopers were discarded, and no athlete appears more than once in the data for any weight category in any given year - only their best total is included in the analyses.

The statistical method used in calculating a score based on body mass and total weight lifted is called quantile regression, hence the name Q Points.

The method is "robust against outliers" - results that stand out as extreme or, in some cases, questionable.

While Sinclair and Robi Points are directly tied to world records, Q Points were developed by comparison with not just one record-breaking performance, but with competition results ranging from 50 in the lightest non-Olympic weight category to more than 200 in ultra-competitive classes.

To simplify, the top 10 per cent of performances across all body weights during the 2017-2021 period are the reference point for calculations at the launch of Q Points.

The new system’s developers say that Sinclair formulas are biased in in favour of the lighter women’s categories and "as a consequence, only lighter weight women will likely receive best lifter awards."

Sinclair Points were invented by the Canadian mathematician Roy Sinclair in 1978, when weightlifting was a men-only sport, although the formula has regularly been updated over the years.

The Q Points formula "removes or reduces the bias of Sinclair Points and Robi Points" said its creators, whose work has been peer reviewed and published in the scientific journal Medicine & Science in Sport & Exercise.

"Roy Sinclair developed his formula on males and published it in the 1980s when women’s weightlifting had barely been recognised internationally," said Asgeir Bjarnason, former President of the Iceland Weightlifting Federation who was one of the core members of the Q Points team led by Huebner.

"Now women’s weightlifting is booming, so hopefully this formula will even the playing field for women in open weight competition, which means the majority of all competitions in smaller nations such as Iceland."

There are plans for Q Points to be used at the Nordic Championships in Sweden in October, and the creators are hopeful that the IWF will assess Q Points for possible use at open-weight competitions.

Tom Goegebuer, Belgium’s head coach and federation President who was on the working party that first discussed a new scoring method last year, said Robi Points were usable only at world or continental championships because they were inconsistent.

An athlete who was 100 grams over the limit for, say, the 73 kilograms category would be measured against the 81kg world record, the next class up. They could lift a considerably bigger total than someone who made the weight on 73.0kg but score far fewer points.

"Maybe it makes more sense to use Robi Points or Sinclair, both based on world records, at the very highest level, but if you want to compare results in national championships it makes more sense to use Q Points,” Goegebuer said.

Huebner added: "The main advantage of Q Points is that they are consistent across body weights and changes in body weight, which is not the case for Robi points."

The Nordic Weightlifting Federation started discussing a new scoring system at the European Championships in May 2022 and created a working group that included members from outside the region.

Its original focus was eliminating results by known dopers from the Sinclair calculations.

Bjarnason from Iceland, Tryggve Duun from Norway, who chairs the European Weightlifting Federation medical committee, Norwegian lifter Kim Eirik Tollefsen, technical official Patrik Helgesson from Sweden, and Goegebuer were involved.

Huebner was brought in as lead statistician, along with two other academics, the American David Meltzer, a leading figure in Masters weightlifting, and Aris Perperoglou, a data science specialist with no connection to the sport.

Huebner was keen to look into an entirely new system, having already written papers about age factors for women in Masters lifting, and performance development, peak age, and body weight differences for youths and seniors.

"After the retesting scandal of the 2008 and 2012 Olympics it was clear that weightlifting needed a points system that was more robust to results that could be eliminated retroactively," said Bjarnason.

"A couple of disqualified world records could have a large impact on Sinclair and Robi points.

"Using this ‘clean’ data from 2017-2021 and the quantile regression formula should reflect well the current state of weightlifting, and should also be robust to any future changes in results.

"Time will tell how well it will hold up."

As with Sinclair points there is a wide disparity between a high score for men and women: about 400 and 250 respectively in Sinclair and 500 and 350 in Q Points.

Huebner said the male-female gap in non-elite competition is less extreme and adjustments are needed for levelling the scores for mixed teams.

Some results from the Q Points calculator are likely to lead to lively discussion within weightlifting.

For example the top male points scorer in the sport is China’s 73kg world record holder Shi Zhiyong, ahead of his 61kg team-mate Li Fabin, while super-heavyweight superstar Lasha Talakhadze of Georgia is rated fourth of the four world record holders in Olympic weight classes.

The top female points scorer is 59kg world record holder Kuo Hsing-Chun from Chinese Taipei, ahead of three Chinese lifters - Liao Guifang at 71kg, Hou Zhihui at 49kg and Li Wenwen in the super-heavyweights.

Some historic performances would outscore today’s top-ranked lifters by a long way, most notably the old 56kg world record of 307kg set by China’s Long Qingquan at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and his team-mate Chen Lijun’s 333kg total in setting the old 62kg world record at the 2015 IWF World Championships.

The Q Points academic paper, published last month, is available here and the algorithm to develop the formula is also free to use on the Open Science Framework here.