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Message board > General Discussion > Relative boat speeds


Relative boat speeds by speedy gonzales - Mon 19th Sep 2005, 11:04pm
I was wondering if anyone knows of a reliable table comparing some kind of average boat speed/gold medal times, or anything really to give an idea of relative boat speeds across ALL the different classes. It's very hard to find any info on non-olympic classes, e.g coxed fours, and how they compare, speed wise to other boats. And/or can people offer opinions on this? Is a women's coxed four, for example going to be faster or slower than a women's pair? Women's eights and men's singles?

by Richard - Tue 20th Sep 2005, 8:36am
speedy gonzales said: And/or can people offer opinions on this? Is a women's coxed four, for example going to be faster or slower than a women's pair? Women's eights and men's singles? I've not seen best times published for a W4+, but I imagine that the men's results might give some idea of the differences between the boat classes. The best times for 2000m are below (all were probably done with a hefty tailwind mind.) M1x: 6:36.33 M2x: 6:04.37 M4x: 5:37.68 M2-: 6:14:27 M2+: 6:42.16 M4-: 5:41.35 M4+: 5:58.96 M8+: 5:19.85 W8+: 5.56.55 If this difference also holds for the W4+, then a coxed IV should be quicker than a pair. As you can see, the best W8+ is faster than the best M4+, let alone a single.

by jpd - Tue 20th Sep 2005, 9:24am
Richard said: As you can see, the best W8+ is faster than the best M4+, let alone a single. However, we need to be careful with the WBTs for non-Olympic boat classes as they are rarely/never going to be rowed by the best athletes - for example, I'd expect a M4+ to (just) beat a W8+ rowed by equivalent standard athletes.

by Simon - Tue 20th Sep 2005, 10:19am
Could we get all the records for Peterborough lake? Then we'd be able to see how classes within events compare - e.g. would a S2 1x beat a WS4 8+? Would be a good characteristic to have on "rowing Top Trump" cards...

by jmg - Tue 20th Sep 2005, 11:52am
jpd said: I'd expect a M4+ to (just) beat a W8+ rowed by equivalent standard athletes. Also, all these figures tell you about are relative speed in screaming tailwind / warm water conditions. In headwind conditions I'd expect an M4+ (or M2+!) to be (relatively to coxless boats) faster than in a tailwind, as working against wind, rather than water resistance becomes more of a factor.

by jpd - Tue 20th Sep 2005, 3:33pm
jmg said: Also, all these figures tell you about are relative speed in screaming tailwind / warm water conditions. In headwind conditions I'd expect an M4+ (or M2+!) to be (relatively to coxless boats) faster than in a tailwind, as working against wind, rather than water resistance becomes more of a factor. Ideally for each boat class we'd take some kind of average time of a significant sample of decent crews in different conditions - perhaps from the A Final of major (2000m) regattas from ten different countries (to partly reduce the effect of bias for/against different boat types in different regions) from the last ten years (which would give us 100 sets of results for each boat class, hopefully enough to get a sensible result for average conditions). Even I'm not sad enough to compile that, especially since the standard of crews setting records and conditions won't affect the ratios between the WBTs of different boat classes so much as to make them completely worthless...

by Richard - Tue 20th Sep 2005, 4:14pm
In case anyone is interested in the WBTs for the other (women's and lwt) events, then they are all here on the FISA website. Interesting to see a familiar name in the German M4- setting the WBT in 2002.