** Update: Sun 13th October ** We apologise for the results not being issued in our traditional prompt fashion, they are now available on Rowstats.
We had multiple issues in the last division that took a lot of time and effort to unpick. These comprise entirely of issues such as crews wearing the wrong numbers (despite all of our numbers having crew details printed wrongly on them), rowers not tying up long hair that covers numbers then calling out the wrong number when challenged, crews rowing twice with the same number having not discussed this with Race Control before doing so, I could go on. Many events would promptly disqualify such crews, but we do always try to put the athletes first. However, such a succession of similar incidents throughout the day has, to be brutally honest, broken us to the extent that those running the computer results service got to the stage where physical and mental exhaustion led to them declaring that they could no longer be sure that the results were 100% accurate. Results were briefly posted earlier on the Rowstats site until it was noticed that the masters handicaps had not been factored in correctly after the last division, at which point the results were immediately pulled from the results site. Any results that you may have seen and taken copies of are null and void, replaced by the version now available.
On behalf of the event and Bedford Rowing Club, I do apologise for the late issue of results and thank you for your patience. We hope that you agree with our position that we strive for 100% accuracy in our results; it’s only fair for our competitors. We will be posting on medals to clubs that win, and heartily apologise to those clubs that waited behind for results way longer than we would have liked.
Apologies also for the lateness of racing which I am afraid is largely due to insufficient levels of watermanship skills and competence displayed by a number of crews throughout the day. Clubs were written to on Saturday to explain that the stream was more lively than usual at Bedford, though well within the levels seen regularly at other rivers around the country. The email pointed out that it was for clubs and coaches to perform their own risk assessment to assure themselves that crews were competent to race; quite frankly many today were not, which led to large delays compounding throughout the day.
We shall be compiling a report of this to be submitted through British Rowing’s incident reporting system and writing to some clubs directly on the subject. If you wish to raise any points with us – on this subject or any other about the day – then please feel free to use the special email address set up for the purpose: [email protected]. Any comments will be treated anonymously or quoted as you wish.
Many thanks,
Gavin Dods
Events chairman
Bedford Rowing Club