Head Race Timing

Autumn Heads 2017 Roundup

I have helped with timing at three Heads this autumn: Pairs Head 14 Oct, Veteran Fours Head 11 Nov, and Scullers Head 2 Dec. We use different systems, but the thing that stands out in getting accurate results is the need for technique.

Pairs Head 2017

Timing system was Webscorer. I was on the backup stopwatch (TAG Heuer HL400) at the Start. Straightforward to time the start. Really efficiently organised by BBL, with timing HQ at the new Fulham Reach Boat Club.

Veteran Fours Head 2017

We had a big team from KCL, and a smaller team from QBC, as well as other volunteers. We had enough people to run Intermediate timing. I mucked up where the intermediate station was, though! Last year the exact half way mark was at Chiswick Pier, but I had overlooked that it was on the flood, whereas this year’s race was on the ebb as normal.

So our intermediates were at 37% of the race run. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how close the splits are. Almost all are within about 1% of each other.

Technically our system performed perfectly. We had real time results from all three timing stations. But we had an operational glitch at the Start, which meant that we had to do a manual correction to times before publishing them.

This year we did photos of finishers instead of video. It is much better. You can view all the images in about an hour, and you can zoom in to see boat identification numbers if they have no bow number. We never need the time from video, as it is an inaccurate time in any event.

We used the new TAG Heuer HL400 watches as backup to the Timy’s. Times from the watches were on average about 0.1s different from the Timy’s. Given they have different operators, with different reaction times, that is remarkably close. When we insert a time from the backup (e.g. if the Timy missed one) then we average five before and five after to find the offset, before inserting a time. This is the recommended FISA procedure.

Scullers Head 2017

This race ran on the flood, starting at 09:30, at the Mile Post, and finishing at Chiswick Staithe.

I was on the backup watch at the Finish. It was a brutally cold day. I did not envy the competitors being on the water waiting to start.

The striking thing about the Scullers Head is the constant stream of boats. I didn’t count them, but there are times when maybe 20 boats finish one after another, with no pause. There is no time to correct mistakes or compare notes with the other timers.

The bow numbers are simply not visible to the timers. You rely on the spotters with binoculars to identify the crews. And then you have the problem of who they are talking about. Is it the one just approaching? Or the one further away? Or the one just past? In the end, on the watch, you just press the button and hope that it will be matched to the correct sequence.

Review of TAG Heuer HL400 Stopwatch

This is a review of the TAG Heuer HL400 Pocket Pro Stopwatch. We use these stopwatches to provide the backup for our Timy timing system.

We bought the watches earlier this year, and used them for the first time to provide backup for the Pairs Head 2017. Then again as backup for the Veteran Fours Head 2017. This is what we have found so far.

It is a chunky stopwatch. The case is aluminium. It is quite a bit bigger than an NK Interval 2000, which I guess is the typical watch used for race timing. It weighs about 160 grams, whereas an NK weighs about 80 grams.

With an NK, you press: one button for On; one button to start the timer; and one button to record a split. This is nice and simple, but there are two problems:

1. If you accidentally press Stop, the timer stops. Press it again and the timer restarts where it left off. This means you must avoid pressing it accidentally at any time after starting.
2. If you accidentally hold the Split button, you clear all times from memory. Obviously you are not going to do this knowingly. The problem arises when transporting it from Race HQ.

To be fair, I have never had a problem with them in practice. It’s just that you are constantly aware of the need not to press the wrong button, or carry it in such a way that the button might get pressed accidentally. I usually supply at least one spare, synchronised, watch in case one is stopped accidentally.

The TAG Heuer has a more accident-proof system. In fact it is altogether a more accurate and reliable system.

1. It stores the time of day. The NK knows nothing about the time of day, just the timer from when it was started.
2. All times are recorded as Time of Day. If you somehow did stop and restart the watch, it would still have the same Time of Day.
3. It takes two buttons to start the timer. So you only need to do this with a few minutes to go before the race.
4. One button to record a split.
5. Two buttons to clear the memory. So you only ever do this once before a race.
6. Two buttons held for 5 seconds to turn the watch off.

This is a safe system. You can transport the watch to and from the timing positions with timing deactivated. Once racing starts, only a two-button combination can stop it.

The Pocket Pro has a USB connection, to Pocket Pro Manager software. After the race you just plug it in, download the times in a second or two, print them to a file, and import them into Excel.

We can also download times via USB from the Timy timing device. This means that within a few minutes we have the two sets of times to compare. Both devices record the times as Time of Day, so they can be compared directly.

In contrast, the NK has an obsolete infrared connection, to software that only works on Windows XP. The times are hours and minutes from when timing started. It is a long job to extract times and compare them.

The next thing is the accuracy. We train timekeepers to do reaction timing. That means that the button on the Timy and the Stopwatch should record a very similar time of day for each split.

In my race, Veteran Fours Head, I found that the two times were on average about 0.1 seconds apart. That is phenomenal. I have never seen this before. With the NK we expect times to be anywhere up to 0.4 seconds apart. This is partly made up of drift, as the NK keeps less accurate time than the Timy. The Pocket Pro has a very accurate Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator (TCXO), like the Timy, in contrast to the NK, which is a regular XO. This means it keeps accurate time during the race, and regardless of the outside temperature.

I have three niggles in practice:

1. The Split button does not have fool proof ergonomics. There is a slight click, but no beep or latch. Depending on how you rest your finger on the button, it is possible not to record a time when you press. You need to hold the finger clearly over the top on the button, pressing down, and not curled at an angle. The watch is large in the hand, and so the finger does not naturally rest directly over the button. With practice there is no reason to make a mistake, but if you used the watch for the first time you might find that some “presses” were not recorded. To keep it in perspective, we mentioned this to our timers, and we had no missed presses caused by this problem.
2. There is no button combination to deactivate timing. I explained above how you activate timing shortly before the race, and until then the buttons are not active. But there is no reverse. You can either leave timing active, or you can turn the watch off. If you leave timing active, then you risk having accidental presses on the way home. That is not a big problem. It is just untidy, and it means you can’t simply compare the number of presses. There is also no real problem with turning the watch off. You just turn it back on at Race HQ to download the times.
3. Lastly, the watch downloads to Pocket Pro Manager. This is Windows only, and exports to a text file only. It’s not really a problem, but: you can’t download to a Mac; and you can’t export to Excel. When you export to text, and import to Excel, the times are recorded as text not times. You need to manipulate them with =TIMEVALUE(range) to use them as real times.

Overall, I am very pleased indeed with the accuracy, the safe operation, and the quick download. It means we can dispense with NK’s, and we don’t need a backup set of Timy’s. You could easily time a smaller race with a high level of accuracy using this watch alone.

Timing Accuracy

There is a peculiar question about how accurate the times in a Head race should be. The obvious answer is: as accurate as possible; better than one hundredth of a second; like they have with photo finish. But a little thought shows that this is unrealistic, and that in fact as a timekeeper you are forced to choose what level of accuracy you can afford to provide.

The best human reaction times are around two tenths of a second. Most people (unscientific guess) are around three or four tenths. You can test yours here: Human Benchmark. I know some people are faster than that. But in the Olympics a reaction of less than one tenth is counted as a false start, because it is humanly impossible.

People have been timing athletics with stopwatches for a long time, and doing better than that. The way they achieve this is by: using reaction times, not anticipation times; and doing the same at the Start and the Finish. That way, the accuracy is the difference between reaction times, and not the reaction time itself. So with good concentration and good technique you may be able to get to an average accuracy of plus or minus a tenth.

But then you have to add the clock accuracy. I won't go into it again here, but all clocks drift, and only expensive clocks drift less than one or two tenths in the course of a race. A normal stopwatch is not sufficiently accurate. Nor is the clock in a video camera. And a computer or iPad clock is way off, even with time correction.

I am happy to accept that races run with different levels of accuracy. I am sure there are many races where one second is perfectly adequate. Even if, as a competitor, you would like it to be better, can you honestly say that it really matters? What I am not happy about is for competitors to believe that the times are accurate, when they are not. For me, the first rule is that times should not be given to a level of precision that is not warranted by the timing system. If the times are given to the full second, and if competitors are fine with that, then that's OK. But if times are give to the hundredth, and competitors "win" or "lose" by a few hundredths when in fact the times are accurate only to a second, then that is not OK.

I have tried to find out what competitors think is a reasonable margin to win or lose by. I have not been able to get a good answer. I was lucky enough to share the cab of a truck with an Olympic rower a few weeks back. I asked him about this. The immediate answer was "as accurate as possible". I think that competitors just don't engage with the idea that times are not absolute, but only plus or minus something. In regattas they are as precise as the photo finish, as we saw in the Olympic single sculls result. Maybe Head races just aren't that serious, and so the question is not asked.

I asked a top coach about this as well. His concern was more about time trials and crew selection. Here the times really do matter; and they may well be inaccurate. As we have more time trials, maybe we need to take more note of how accurate the timing is.

I find it is quite common to hear the view that manual times are only accurate to a second anyway, so why bother with trying to make the system more accurate than that. But then, if that's the case, don't publish times with a precision of less than a second; and see what competitors think.

One of the outcomes will be many more ties. I did an analysis of different races with the distribution of time differences: time distributions. It is quite remarkable how many competitors finish inside the same second as another. In some races, but not all, it affects the category winners too. I have wondered why this is. I think the underlying reason is that times are based on power and drag, and for most rowers the effective power band is fairly narrow. 

So another way to look at the question is: would competitors be happy to have a lot of ties? Ties for first place overall, ties for place in category, ties for top ten. Personally I don't think so. For me, every result is the outcome of a lot of hard work. I want to take from it everything I can get! If I have a third place, then I would like to know it was third, and not equal with several others. it is quite obvious watching crews go by on the water that I can discriminate between them by much less than a second. One second is five to ten meters. It is a long way. We really should be able to do better than that. 

But if that is the conclusion, then you need to have a timing system that is demonstrably more accurate. And many of them are not.

Veteran Fours Head 2016

The Veteran Fours Head 2016 took place on Sunday 13 November, starting in the morning at 10:32 and running on the flood tide, with a course from Barn Elms to Chiswick Staithe.

It was an eventful race from a timing perspective, with some new and unforeseen problems. We had real time results, as normal for the last few years, but for the first time we had a long delay before getting out the results. What happened?

We had an excellent timing team this year, with Kings College London (KCL) Boat Club playing a big part.  We had real time results flowing in nicely, and being published straight onto the website using SkyDrive. After the race the Start and Finish timing devices came back and we started to go through them, as normal, to update the missing crew identifications. This is where we can't make out the crew number by eye, so we put in a dummy number in real time and correct it later. It's quite normal to have crews like this. We make a note of the blades and fill in the number afterwards. But it quickly became clear that some of the identifications at the Start could not be right. 

I forget the exact order of event, but we had a very polite enquiry asking if we were sure about one time; and we went through the crews and found some that could not be right. So we pulled the published provisional times off the web, put up a note to say that we had good times but needed to check the crews, and started work.

The basic problem was that we knew that some crews had been mis-identified, but we did not have an authoritative source of the correct crews. I should explain how this works. There is always a risk that the timers will get something wrong. They have to work quickly to keep up with the crews, and it is easy to make a mistake, or simply not have time to get the correct data. It is not too bad at the Start, but much harder at the Finish. We cover this by having: an independent sequence with just the crew numbers and no attempt to match them to time; and a video. Like most races we don't have an abundance of volunteers, and we have to choose what roles are most important. We normally have a video at the Finish, but not at the Start.

This year it went badly wrong. We (especially I) did not foresee that, running on the flood tide in the morning, the Sun would be low and in the eyes of the timers at the Start. The low Sun and the reflection on the water made our new yellow numbers unreadable. The timing team literally could not see the number. Looking at the data after the race, I can see that they made a fantastic and largely successful effort to get the crew identities, by recognising them and looking up the number.

This is where our problems compounded. Because the numbers could not be read, the sequencers conferred to agree who the crew was. This meant that we had only one sequence, and not several to compare. And we did not have a video because it was at the Finish.

The good news, before you leap to a conclusion, is that the times were good. Times and crew numbers are two different data streams. In our system we use a separate button presser, who is not distracted by trying to identify a crew. We did the usual thing of comparing the Timy times with the stopwatch to see if there were any big discrepancies, and there were not. This may be a little hard to understand if you are a competitor. You imagine that if a time is "wrong" then the timing team must just guess at what is right, but that's not the case. The time is exactly right: it is just matched to the wrong crew. By elimination you can eventually get to the right crew, giving the right result.

We had about three or four places in the results where the identified order at the Start was clearly wrong. We were helped by some very constructive and supportive information from crews. We pieced together information from different sources about who was behind and who was ahead; who overtook and was overtaken. 

We managed to piece it together, and I am confident of the result. We ended with, in one case, a three way tie between three crews that we had trouble identifying. They may have thought this was a bit of a coincidence, but it was in fact one of the most validated results of the race. They had a thrilling race, and their results were corroborated by: the coxes view of who was ahead and behind at the Start; intermediate places at Chiswick; BigBlade photos at three places; and an observer on Barnes Bridge.

It was an unforeseen problem, and it ended our run of several years of good quick results. It reinforces the view that you absolutely must have an independent backup of some kind, and you must test it as if you had to rely on it alone.

What will we do to stop this happening again? Number one is that you can't use yellow numbers with a low Sun behind. Number two is to use photographs at Start and Finish as the independent sequence. But where to find the volunteers is another question.

TAG-Heuer HL400 Stopwatch

Stopwatch timing is still a perfectly valid way of timing a Head race. You need a watch that has: a certified level of accuracy; enough memory; and a way to export the data. Here is a stopwatch that meets the criteria best: TAG-Heuer HL400.

This watch came out at the end of 2014, so it is quite new in stopwatch terms. I don't own one, so this is not a review. But I have an interest in what equipment can be used to time a race accurately.

I have seen a few different makes of stopwatch being used for timing a Head race. I drew up a table of what is required, and which stopwatches meet the requirement: Stopwatches. When I started timing, I got the impression that the NK Interval 2000 was the normal standard, but over the years I have seen several different types being used. The NK stopwatch is fine, and might be easy to borrow because coaches use it for split times. But it has a couple of problems: no certified level of accuracy; and an obsolete export to Excel. This works on Windows XP but not on Windows 7. It takes an excruciatingly long time to download the times; AND downloads them in seconds since the watch started, so you need some Excel skills to use them to produce results. My point is not to criticize it, but to point out that even such an obvious thing as the choice of stopwatch is not easy. The Seiko S143 has great accuracy, and exports to a printer, but only 300 times so not enough for the bigger Head races.

The TAG-Heuer HL400 has several really good features for Head race timing:

1. Certified level of accuracy, of +- 0.7 parts per million, or 2.8 ms per hour. This is more than adequate. It is about 25 times more accurate than a normal watch.
2. 800 times in memory
3. A modern export to PC over USB.

The USB interface can connect to a PC to export the data in real time. This solves the problem in laptop timing that the laptop is not an accurate timing device. So you could: connect the HL400 to a laptop; use the HL400 to provide accurate time; use the laptop to calculate and display results. You still have the problem that a laptop requires power and shelter.

One of the models, the HL400-DF, also has a Bluetooth interface. This is used to send timing data to a video stream created by the Dartfish Express app. This could be very interesting for Head race timing, as it gets round the problem that the clock in a video camera is not an accurate timing device. If we could overlay the time from a TAG-Heuer HL400 onto the video from a 1080p video camera then we could have a not-too-expensive video timing system. 

Season is Over

One of the peculiar things about race management is that each event comes around only once a year. This means you get all year to think about it, a few short months or weeks to work up to it, then it is all over to next year. If you don't make improvements, its another year before you can try again.

This year I learnt quite a lot from volunteering to help with timing for other Head races.

Yellow on Black numbers are much more readable than white on black.

Marine binoculars really help when it comes to spotting bow numbers.

The role of Spotter needs to be a bit different than before. Instead of identifying crews up the course, it needs to focus on identifying them for the timers at the Finish.

We need better shelter when it rains. Anyone know of a portable bus shelter?

Technique, technique, technique. It doesn't matter what equipment you use, it can only work with the right technique.

We all rely on a corps of volunteers. Pairs Head, Quintin Head, Vesta Vets Head and Scullers Head all rely heavily on their respective clubs. Fours Head and HoRR have a corps of long-time helpers, perhaps aided by the fact that veterans and coaches are not competing in the event. Women's Head have a keen and able group many of whom come from Cambridge. It's a challenge to attract the volunteers, and without experienced volunteers it really cannot work. So thanks to all of them!

Veteran Head of the River 2016

Just back from helping with timing for the Veteran Head of the River race, run on the same weekend as the HoRR.

This one is run by Vesta, with most of the timing volunteers being senior Men and Women from the club. This year they used the Webscorer tablet timing system, same as the Pairs Head. The tablets (iPad or iPhone) work as a pair, one at Start and one at the Finish. 

My role was on the backup Watch at the Finish, with the very capable Kate. Kate operated the watch while I did the writing.

The race was unusual in the number of crews finishing together. I guess that we had more than ten occurrences of three or four crews finishing close together.

The Webscorer app seemed to cope well. In Normal View you need to select a "bib" (crew number) in order to record a time; but in Fast-tap View you have a choice: to get the time first, then assign the crew number; or to tap the crew number first and then get the time. 

On the Watch we had great teamwork and I think got a perfect set of results. I am sure the times were right, as Kate was concentrating hard on the line, while we worked together to make sure we knew who the crews arriving were and how we were going to get the times. The way we did it was to write down the full time for individual finishers, and for the last finisher in a tight group of finishers. The Memory counter in the watch then gives us the actual times for the crews in between, and makes sure that our sequence is complete. 

In the event the Webscorer tablet times were fine and the Watch times weren't needed, but that's what backup is for and its satisfying to know we had a good set of times anyway.

Congratulations to the Chief Timekeeper and the whole team for a great set of results.

 

 

Head of the River 2016

Yesterday I was part of the volunteer timing team for the Head of the River race. It was run in good conditions. The temperature was about 8-10 degrees, with a slight North Easterly breeze.

The Head of the River has a unique timing system that they have developed over the years. They produce "Quick Results" from a combined tablet and laptop system; and then final times from a video camera at the Finish. They describe the system here: How we time the Head of the River Race.

My role was Spotter at the Finish, working together with the very capable Patrice. Last year we found that the Motor Vessel Interceptor was unable to lay an anchor, so this year a buoy was laid by the PLA. This was a success and we remained in one place throughout the race.

Patrice and I worked together by identifying the crews up ahead, but then giving them to the timers as they approached the line. I think this was a success. Otherwise if you call out crews too far ahead, the timers are busy with the ones approaching the line and can't absorb the information about the ones further up.

The race timing went very smoothly. We had few missing bow numbers, and few bunches of finishers. There were only three or four groups that were difficult to time. I heard from one of the senior umpires afterwards that the marshalling went very well, which I think is probably related.

As far as I know the "Quick Times" were out quickly, and the final times not much later. Congratulations to the HoRR timing team!

Womens Head 2016

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.

 

Quintin Head 2016

It was almost a perfect day to race yesterday, for the Quintin Head 2016. Sunny and dry, not too cold, no wind and a race start at a very convenient 11:00 a.m.

This race is one that is run by the club (as you might guess from the name!) and so club members pitch in to help with timing, marshalling and everything else involved in running a race. The club ran a training session for the timing team on the Thursday before the race. They have been using the same system now for several years, so for some people this is a refresher. The way they do it is to use the timing equipment while watching a video of the race finish in the previous year. This irons out the muddle that can happen when several crews finish close together.

The timing went perfectly on the day. The times were available in real time. This year the Chief Timekeeper, Roger Hine, set up a TV screen in the club room to display the results during the race. We had just a few corrections to make at the end, as is normal. This happens because, in the end, the matching of a time to a crew is manual. The way we do it is to go through the different sequences carefully to see if there are any discrepancies. This is where, for example, one timer has written down 112 and another has 122. It doesn't mean we don't know. In almost all cases you can eliminate an obvious error. In case of real doubt we can refer to the video. Then the times get updated with the definitive sequence.