Just back from helping with timing for the Womens Eights Head of the River 2016. This is a great race for timing. In the last few years they have held prize giving soon after the end of the race, instead of on a different date as most Heads do. This creates a pressure for quick results, and a satisfaction in producing them.
It was very cold: a few degrees above zero, with occasional gusts and showers of freezing rain from the North West. It is hard to time in these conditions, as your hands seem to slow down and it takes extra effort to do anything precise. The crews had a hard time of it as well. There were a few retirements and non-starters as a result of the cold.
I was Timy operator on the Start. We has an unusual number of crews with no number. This year I came across something I have not seen before: two crews from the same club, both with missing numbers; and twice!
It must be obvious, but I don't think crews quite realise, that if we can't identify a crew it is not just their time but the whole results that are delayed. It's not necessarily their fault. They may have got too close to another crew while marshalling, or a crew ahead may have drifted down on them. But the results depend on matching a time to a crew. Until all are matched you can't be quite sure that the results are correct. For example, let's say two crews are missing their number at the start, separated by three places. At the finish they are identified as each other. The later crew then gets the finish time of the earlier crew, and wins the pennant.
It took us about 2 hours, at a guess, from the last crew finishing to identify all the crews and have the complete set of times. No corrections of times, just sorting out who was who. During the race we have real time results from the Timy for identified crews, but not for identified or mis-identified crews. At the end of the race, the way we do it is: take the three sets of sequences (the primary timer, the secondary timer and the independent one) and produce a master sequence. Then compare the master sequence with the Timy sequence and make all corrections. For example the Timy will have an unidentified crew as 998, 997 and so on.This gets replaced by the correct crew number, producing an instant result for that crew. Then the correct Timy times are uploaded again to the results software, producing the complete results.
At this point we have provisional times. Then we need to add penalties from the Chief Umpire; and handicaps from the British Rowing handicap table. This gives us provisional results, and sufficient to hold prize-giving.
We are all thinking about how we can aid crew identification. Quintin Head has a new system of stick-on numbers. We use marine binoculars and can mostly read the Environment Agency number, but that tells you who owns the boat, not who is in it. We are also thinking that still photographs of each crew are more useful than video. Video sounds as though it should be great, but it can be out of focus, not zoomed in enough, not clear enough to read the number. A still photograph gives us a clear number, in a clear sequence, and is much quicker to review than video.