All About Rowing Stats with @rowingbythenumbers

I reached out to the popular account @rowingbythenumbers on Instagram, who tracks and posts stats, results, and who to watch for Junior and Collegiate level rowing.

Here's what I learned.

Q: How do you get these ranked stats and results, when teams aren't often competing directly head-to-head?

A: Most of what we do starts with looking at race results over time and trying to find patterns in speed, margins, and consistency across different regattas and conditions. One concept we use a lot is something we call “relative margins.”

Q: What's a relative margin?

A: Instead of just looking at where a boat finished, we look at how far behind or ahead they were relative to other crews, and then compare those gaps across races. If two teams haven’t raced each other directly, you can still get a rough sense of how they stack up by looking at their margins against common opponents.

Q: How can I track my own stats?

For tracking your own races, a good starting point is logging your time, your margin to boats ahead and behind, and the conditions (wind, current, lane, etc.). Over time you can start to see trends like how your crew performs against certain competitors or how much those margins change through the season.

Let me know if there are any other rowing accounts, people, or things you think I should research!