Many clubs will be going away after Christmas for a training and selection camp. So if you think you’ve been ‘shafted’ or risk losing your seat – learn about the process, when in the boat during the testing, keep your own record of crews and time margins of win/loss. Then you can see for yourself and work out whether the results are valid.
If you are thinking of running Seat Racing as a means of crew selection, you may want to read this ebook.
Duncan Hollands’s Seat Racing ebook
Duncan used seat racing for Cambridge University Boat Club selection for boat race crews. In a seminar he gave for Rowperfect customers, he explains the principles of seat racing and where it fits into the wide range of selection criteria available to a coach. All this is written up in the ebook.
The advantages and disadvantages of seat racing
Where racing can help is with closely matched athletes of similar ability. Where it doesn’t work is if athletes are dishonest, if water conditions do not favour fair racing, and with unskilled athletes and coxswains.
The rules of seat racing
- Only one change at a time
- The athletes must not know what the next change is
- Times don’t matter, differences do
Read the full slide deck including the explanatory notes. And the “spider diagram” showing wins, losses and time differences including null race explanation.
So if you think you’ve been ‘shafted’ or risk losing your seat – learn about the process of seat racing, when in the boat during the testing, keep your own record of crews and time margins of win/loss. Then you can see for yourself and work out whether the results are valid.
