Monday 22 April 2013

Head of the Cam - results and round-up

Instructions, etc., are available from the main HoC page.

FINAL Results

The FINAL results are now up at http://tinyurl.com/hoc-2013-final.

Thanks to all the volunteers from Chesterton club who helped organise and marshall the event, our umpires, and of course to the competitors. We congratulate the fastest overall crew, Caius M1 (8:28); and fastest women, Downing W1 (10:13).

Pots

Those who won pots but were too cool to be at the prize ceremony are invited to contact me.

Timings: the grimy details

The provisional results have been checked and are now promoted to final. Obscurity swirled around crews 439-445 but this is now resolved and it did not affect any category winners. Attempting, and failing, to unravel this explains the half hour delay of the prizes, if you were wondering. The Press X-Men novice VIII had to pull in a pointed sub at the last minute, and so are really IM3. They had the poor taste to win Novice VIIIs, and so the new winner is 99's Brown. Let me tell you about crews 439-445. Its really exciting (no, don't turn off) and burnt up an hour of my life trying to fix. So: we had start/finish sheets that looked like:
439 2x- PB&D T/F    W MasC          00:46:04
440 1x  Broxbourne  M MasD 00:32:54 00:46:01
441 1x  City Colm   M Nov  00:33:15 00:46:07
442 1x  City Thomas M Nov  00:33:47 00:46:17
443 1x  PB&D CM     M IM3  00:34:10 00:46:46
444 1x  PB&D NB     M IM3  00:34:26 00:46:10
445 1x  PB&D SC     M IM3  00:34:41  

You see the problem - no start time for 439, no finish time for 445. We could invent a start time for 439 fairly readily - there was only 20 secs between 438 and 440 - but the finish times were tricky, as the sculls were wildly out of order at the end of the course. Alternatively, we could decide that 439 had never started, and the finish folk had written down a batch of numbers out of order. Or perhaps 445 had never started and the start times were off-by-one instead.

In the heat of the moment I went for inventing start a start time for 439, and a finish time for 445, partly swayed by the general balance of opinion around me that a whole block being written off-by-one was unlikely. However... to cut many conversations short, PB&D have confirmed now that 439 didn't row, so the One True Answer is that the finish folk were off-by-one for a block. I will give them a stern talking-to, you may be sure.

Happily, this doesn't affect any category winners. It does change the order of the PB&D sculls.

Old stuff

The final draw is: http://tinyurl.com/hoc-2013-final-draw.

The draft draw was: http://tinyurl.com/hoc-2013-draft-draw.

Notes:

  • My start marshalls asked me to group the VIIIs more at the top - because of the way we stake out the marshalling positions, its a pain to have 1x and 2x's mixed up in the VIIIs. So I've moved a number of small boats down. Don't be offended. You can have a gap if you need it.
  • The start marshalls are friendly people. They are amenable to "please can I have a large gap" type requests, and to the sculls sorting themselves into order if required (or, put another way, don't trouble me with trivial change requests). The VIIIs, however, we'd really like to get off in order.
  • Despite my pleas, many people provided no estimated time, and perhaps they were wise because I think to detect incompatibilities in the volunteered times. The order is based on your estimates, my limited skill, judgement and prejudices, and a bias towards sorting the VIIIs to the top and the sculls to the bottom.

Useful notes

  • Race control is at Queens boathouse, upstairs. We're open from 7:45 for numbers.
  • To ensure a prompt start, it will help if the crews can make some attempt to come up the reach in reverse order.
  • The overtaking rule is, as last year, "cede the racing line to the faster crew". This is in the race instructions, which you've read.