Mark Mussared is an experienced Australian umpire (referee) and former member of the Masters Rowing committee for Rowing Australia. He sent me this email in January 2023.
I recently retired as South Australia’s rep on the RA Masters Commission, having served since late 2012. One job I did in my tenure, in 2013, was to review and revise RA’s masters handicap tables.
The tables existing at that time dated from the 1990s, were fairly arbitrary, and were unfair.
The revision I recommended, and which was adopted, was derived from a detailed statistical analysis of the results from the World Masters regattas of 2011, 2012 and 2013.
From that I was able to derive prognostic speeds and times over 1000m for every boat class, in every age grade, men women and mixed.
These prognostics form the basis of the handicap tables, and are effectively “the limit” that masters should aspire to.
For example, medal winners at Australian Masters Rowing Championships events typically have to achieve at least 97% of prognostic speed.
While the prognostics are derived for 1000m, they also have application for longer distance events where, naturally, crews are not operating at their 1000m prognostic speeds.
For example, at the Head of the Yarra (8.6km) you typically have to achieve 85 to 87% of their 1000m prognostic speed to be on the podium. For the Head of the Charles, (3 miles or ~5km), winning average speeds are around 91-92% of 1000m prognostic.
I attach a set of prognostic tables for your information.
There have been minor revisions since 2013, including the addition of the 3-year age grades for those 81 and over (which was done by World Rowing after we showed them our work back in 2017), but the prognostics and the resulting handicaps have proved to work very well since their introduction in 2013.
If you would like any further information please let me know.
Regards,
Mark Mussared
Prognostic Times and Prognostic Speed charts
Head Race Prognostics
The Head of the Yarra people use the 1000m handicaps simply scaled up by a factor of 8.6.
This is actually not correct because boats are travelling at slower speed that they would over just 1000m.
Because of this, the time allowance for an older boat should be greater than they use in events for mixed grades. That is, younger boats have an advantage in such a mixed grade.
What they should do is to compare each boat’s average speed with its 1000m prognostic speed, determine what percentage of that prognostic they are operating at, and award the event to the boat with the highest percentage.
I don’t think we’ve shared our prognostics with World Rowing since we saw them in 2017, so they wouldn’t have the numbers for the revised age categories – unless they’ve looked at the Rowing Australia website.
