Repechage

Types

In a full repechage system, any competitor who loses to the eventual winner of their pool is placed into a separate consolation bracket. The idea is that a strong athlete who happens to meet another strong athlete early should not be unfairly eliminated by bad luck; instead, they get a chance to compete for at least third place. For example, with 64 competitors split into four pools of 16 (A, B, C, D), the main bracket narrows to eight quarterfinalists after three rounds. From each pool, four defeated competitors—those who lost to the pool winner in the first, second, third, and quarterfinal rounds—enter the repechage. The larger the pool, the longer first-round losers must wait to learn if they will compete again.

Quarterfinal repechage only includes losers from the quarterfinal round; earlier rounds are single elimination. Quarterfinal losers from two pools (say, A and B) go into one repechage bracket, while losers from the other two pools go into the other. The losers of these repechage matches are placed seventh. The winners then face the semifinal losers from the opposite bracket; those who lose are placed fifth, and the winners each receive a bronze medal.

Usage

Repechage systems pop up in a variety of sports, each with its own twist. In Major League Baseball, the wild card teams in each league form a repechage bracket. At many amateur levels of baseball and softball, including the NCAA, tournaments run as full double-elimination repechages. The current 64-team NCAA baseball and softball tournaments mix things up: the first and third rounds are full double-elimination repechages, while the second and fourth rounds are best-two-of-three-game series. The Southeastern Conference baseball tournament uses a flip-bracket format, where the winner of the first championship bracket faces the winner of the second repechage bracket, and the winner of the second championship bracket meets the winner of the first repechage bracket; both games are single elimination, and their winners then play for the championship.

Some competitions use a modified double elimination called Olympic Crossing. In that format, winning teams keep competing until only two remain, while teams with one loss continue in an elimination bracket until two are left. Then each of the two remaining winning teams plays a team from the losers bracket; the winners of those matches go to the final, while the semifinal losers compete for third place. In track cycling, repechage heats appear in the keirin and match sprints, giving non-qualifiers from preliminary heats a second chance to advance.

In fencing, repechage was once common but most events have dropped it, though the United States Fencing Association still uses it for Division I tournaments. Local events sometimes adopt direct elimination with repechage, even though it means some competitors have to wait; for team events, it encourages using direct elimination from the start instead of pools. In karate, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling, single-elimination brackets determine the two finalists, and a repechage bracket is built from athletes knocked out by those finalists to decide third place. This system addresses the possibility of two top competitors meeting early, giving the loser a chance to compete for a bronze medal.