UK points system
Mr. K.T.T. Corley
can we have a discussion about the Senior Open,I,II,III system in the UK?
(Quick explanation for non-Uk rowers who're bothering to read this...
(at senior level in the Uk you gain a point for every win at an ARA
(regatta, with the exception of your novice win. The points of the
(oarspeople in the boat are added up, and you go up a status at
(approximately two wins per seat upto open. The maximum number of
(points per person is 12.
(i don't think that made any sense at all.. never mind.. :) )
Anyway, there seems to be a huge bottle neck at Senior 3... this is
witnessed by the fact that at several regattas this year, the winning
time for Senior 3 has been considerably faster than that for Senior 2...
(Sunday at Reading to name one example)
Novices coming up to Senior 3 must find it very hard to ever win again..
(at least that season)
A possible solution is to scrap Senior 2, and have a new division available
to ex-Novices in the season following their Novice win (until they win
in that division or the season ends)
Also the points system naturally favours people who row for crews that
do not go to many ARA regattas - witness the Isis stroke rowing at S3
at HT&V this year for Cherwell (Marlow beat them :) )
Anyone got any better solutions.. or anyone think there isn't a problem..
(I know the _real_ solution is to get good enough that you can beat most
people at Open Status... but if everyone does this, we just have the same
problem with faster crews! :) )
Kevin
(Thames RC)
flem...@vax.ox.ac.uk
that's what I thought too until some punter said the rules had changed...
The UK points system is certainly worth discussing as it obviously isn't
perfect, but I think it isn't quite as bad as some people make out. S3
certainly is a 'catch-all' category, and you never are sure what you'll be
up against there. 'Genuine' novices who have just won their first pots will
find it pretty hard to get an S3 win that season.
That's largely because of the number of people competing and improving
outside the system - schoolboys in junior racing, and college rowers in closed
college regattas. When these people join the open system, it's usually at S3
level, because it's very difficult to fill a boat (an 8 anyuway) entirely with
genuine novices, or becuase they don't think they should be racing as novices
when they obviously aren't. So S3 is hugely more competitive than novice.
But the idea that loads of people are 'hanging round' at S3 is just false. Two wins
and you're out, mate, to S2. If all these college/ex-school crews are really
so fast, they'll win, and move up. The problem is that there's a huge
supply of people coming in from outside to replace them. People who didn't
compete with the genuine novices at novice level. But what this means is not
that S3 is 'too hard'; rather that getting your novice pot is *too easy*.
You can't have it both ways. If every time your ex-novice crew enters S3 it
loses to a college crew, but college crews are only S3 because they *never*
race in open regattas (contradiction!) then there must be hundreds of college
crews out there. If they started racing at Novice level too, then that would
become more competitive. S3 is the normal level of competition; novice is
artificially easy.
So why is S2 sometimes easier? Probably because the attrition rate amongst rowers,
particularly college ones, is so high. A crew only lasts a season; it is
unlikely to get far into S2 before everybody moves away.
If I'm right, the 'problem', if problem it be, is that there is a good supply of
unpointed S3 rowers who give up before they make it to high status. That
makes S3 seem artificially competitive. To offset this, the S3 'band'
obviously needs to be made narrow, to minimise the time each person competes
there. But it already is only 2 points wide; perhaps we could reduce it to
one.
Of course all this assumes people are honest with point declarations. This
can't be guaranteed, but I think the the amount and effect of trickery are
overstated, just based on my own experience. It is mainly in prestigious
events like HORR where the value of the pots is so high that abuses will be
found; it just isn't worth my while lying to try to win S3 restricted fours
at the Trumpton Head of the Village Pond race.
Sculling makes an interesting contrast. There, it seems, the bottleneck is at
novice; S3 can be easier. I think the reasons are similar: a huge stock of well-
trained sweep rowers trying out sculling, winning their novice pots, and going
back to sweeping again, to be replaced by other 'dabblers' doing the same thing.
I think if people are honest, the system is reasonable. And they usually are.
The mistake is to think that Novice racing reflects the whole system; it
obviously doesn't.
tom
Chris Harrison
>can we have a discussion about the Senior Open,I,II,III system in the UK?
>witnessed by the fact that at several regattas this year, the winning
>time for Senior 3 has been considerably faster than that for Senior 2...
>(Sunday at Reading to name one example)
>Also the points system naturally favours people who row for crews that
>do not go to many ARA regattas - witness the Isis stroke rowing at S3
>at HT&V this year for Cherwell (Marlow beat them :) )
The bottleneck is not just produced by large numbers of people winning
their novice pots and not progressing. As Kevin has pointed out, the
traditional spurning of external regattas by the Oxbridge rowing
community has meant the sort of situation outlined. This is changing,
but very slowly.
The other contributing factor is junior/school rowing. A rower can compete
(and win) for years in the junior categories but is regarded as S3, no matter
how many junior pots they have on the shelf. There must be a fairer way
to assimilate junior rowers into the senior setup that is currently done.
At present someone who wins their novice pot in their first season might
well be considered the competitive equal of someone who has just returned
from representing the country at the Junior Worlds. That's hardly fair, is it?
>Anyone got any better solutions.. or anyone think there isn't a problem..
>(I know the _real_ solution is to get good enough that you can beat most
>people at Open Status... but if everyone does this, we just have the same
>problem with faster crews! :) )
Apart from asking people to row at their level, irrespective of their points?
(And making sure that people don't 'lose' points along the way.)
There are always going to be better crews, after all that's the whole point
of competition. The need for the points system is to give you some sort of
guide as to the general level of your peers, obviously the current system is
flawed, fatally so IMHO. Juniors must be allowed to compete on their own, but
when they compete as seniors their past MUST count for more than it presently
does.
There can never be a wholly fair system and whatever system there is will
always
be bent by some. Perhaps the ARA could really try (as the new points book
indicate they might be) to enforce the system we have. How many of the
S3 bottleneck crews really are S3?
chris.
(And that's without evening mentioning what happens to someone with many points
but whose best years are behind them but not quite up to veteran.)
==
chris harrison.
ic-parc, william penney laboratory, imperial college, london, sw7 2bz.
RussGB
Flem...@vax.ox.ac.uk wrote:
> It is mainly in prestigious
> events like HORR where the value of the pots is so high that abuses will
be
> found; it just isn't worth my while lying to try to win S3 restricted
fours
> at the Trumpton Head of the Village Pond race.
at S3 this year. We were well beaten by some, and we beat some others.
However I seem to remember that the top two or three S3 crews finished
high in the top 100 or much better. I seem to remember the Novices being
very highly placed. It is clear from the results that there was a large
group who were 'really' S3 calibre, and there were some who were too good
and some who were not good enough. I'm not saying that there was cheating
because while bendable rules are in existance I would expect them to be
bent.
I can't see crews getting as much satisfaction from a whitewash victory as
from a hard fought final. I wonder whether the jump from novice to S3
happens too quickly. When I won my novice pot it was almost by mistake. It
was only our second regatta, and we byed into the final and won by three
lengths. We were not ready for the next regatta at S3 which for us was the
Docklands. We got completely toasted, and we felt like the novices we
really were.
What would happen if Novices required two wins to jump to S3? I think this
would take a bit more determination and more time, but would even out the
lower end of S3.
As for the upper end.....?
Russ.
Adam Whybrew
system. There are also further complications with differences between
different boat classes.
In eights it is very rare for a S3 win to be faster than S2, in my
experiance anyway. Eights are usually the top boat of a club, they
require lots of organisation and getting eight peoble with anomolous
points is unusual. Winning in an eight at any level is tough because
competition is fierce.
My experiance in coxless pairs is the opposite. Coming from fours and
eights that struggle in S3, I have won S3 2- faster than the S2 and close
to the S1. I think that this is because the pairs tend to be individuals
who organise themselves. I know of no club that has a training programme
and a squad for its pairs, it is much more of 'hey Jo let's do it'.
That, combined with the fact that in small boats it is not how well you
row, but how well you row together that counts, gives huge anomalies in
the categories winning times at many regattas.
Other categories fall somewhere in between. I think that it all
correlates to how many people race, and how often - whether it is
considered a _serious_ row or a fill in just done for the variety.
W.W.
ECBC (Oxon.)
Conference Desk
The system is clearly open to abuses and is full of loopholes - The
ARA has tried to do somthing about this with the introduction of
points books complete with the oarman's photo on the idea being
that you have to get the book signed by a regatta official before
you collect any pots - so much for the theory I have won six pots
this year (so far still Cambs Aut to go!) and nobody has even
asked to see my points book let alone signed it.
There's no way some of the more extreme abuses of the system can
be eliminated (ringers and so on) until this is sharpened up at the
moment the whole thing seems rather pointless.
If you look at the system as a whole. There are clearly some
regattas which are going to be harder to win than others - A
possible solution to the reulting variable "value" of wins is to
apply a points weighting to specific events so for example a win
at the Met or Peterborough would be worth say 1.5 or 2 points
versus 1 point for smaller regattas. It also might be worthwhile to
expand the bands 2pts Novice 5pts Senior 3 8pts Senior 2 12pts
Senior 1 15pts Open
Just my 1.5p
Gideon
Furnivall Sculler
First Europe Communications Tel: +44 (0) 171 404 0424
85 Clerkenwell Road Fax: +44 (0) 171 404 7733
London EC1M 4AN
UK http://www.ibmpcug.co.uk/~1stconf
Jeremy Martin
towards the correct level of racing for your crew. The previous system of
Novice, Senior C, Senior B, Senior A, and Elite was much less fair as the
status of the crew was taken as the highest status of an oarsman within it.
So if you had a crew with seven novices and one Elite oarsman you had to
enter Elite. This was a particular problem for small clubs. With the
current system the status of the oarsmen is effectively averaged out to
give the status of the crew.
My personal situation is that I have been at the maximum status level (12
points) for many years, but I no longer row very seriously. Under the old
system any crew that I was in would have had to row Elite, so that would have
virtually ended my competitive rowing career. However the new system is much
better for the likes of me, because I can step into a lower status crew,
when needed, without raising its status too high.
Originally veteran rowing was intended for people like me with families
and too many commitments to train seriously. Unfortunately it is now taken
far more seriously.
It is certainly true that some people cheat with regard to status points.
Perhaps I should avoid mentioning names, but I can assure you that some
of the big Universities do it. Personally I think that your actual ARA
status should be regarded as your MINIMUM racing level. Guys from Isis
should be racing at Open level, not Senior III.
Jeremy Martin