Seeding Helps Set Olympic Heats

The seeding panel from FISA's Competitive Rowing Commission draw from many decades of rowing experience using their own knowledge as well as past World Cup and World Championship results.

Seeding is used solely to ensure not all of the top crews end up in the same heat. It is not aimed at predicting the likely finalists, or ensuring that seeded crews have a clear road to the finals.

"We don't aim to rank them," says John Boultbee, chairperson in the Competitive Rowing Commission, "just to stop an unbalanced draw."

To make sure there is reasonable separation of the fast boats, the seeding panel uses the past results of each crew, noting particularly which crews have raced each other and giving priority to the most recent and therefore most current results of each crew. This means that results from the final BearingPoint Rowing World Cup in Lucerne in June was vital for Olympic seeding.

Since not all crews attend every regatta, the seeding panel must extrapolate, based on which crews have raced against, and beaten each other. In the opening draw this has impacted on the United States men's eight that goes to the Olympics ranked second in the world after last year's World Championships. But they are unseeded at this regatta.

"The seeding panel looked at the US men's eight entered and the crew as such has not raced internationally. Therefore there was no known form for that crew," says Boultbee.

Current World Champions in the lightweight men's four, Denmark, are also unseeded after a run of average results this season. Boultbee comments; "The main factor looked at in seeding was the form in the most recent regattas."