About

This is a volunteer project to create a comprehensive database of all rowing results. We are also experimenting with methods of ranking rowers based on aggregating their public race results.

Team

Rowingstats is a site created, developed and run by Charles Barry.

Contributors. The site benefits from the work of several contributors:

• Andrew Ronaldson - Women's races, conversion of pdfs to structured data
• Stefan Paetow - Data scraper extraordinaire: International race results, Marlow Regatta

Need to get in touch with us? Drop us an email to: contact dot rowingstats at gmail dot com

Goals

We have several related aims:

• To create a comprehensive, searchable database of all rowing results, starting with the UK domestically and rolling out to the wider world.
• In doing so, to use modern digital technologies and open data standards, including by developing an API for people to use for their own research or applications.
• To encourage all races in the UK to use a common data standard for the publication of their race results.
• To investigate ways of analytically ranking or comparing athletes in sweep rowing and sculling, informed by the data stored on this website.

To do

We still have quite a lot to do to make this website a success. Our primary goal is to stabilise this website, make it useable and functioning, and then to add more data!

Data to be added

We can only include racing results if we receive a complete crew list along with a list of finish positions for any regatta/head. Times are not important, which is why at the moment we haven't bothered to put any in the results database. Importantly, knowing the club name of a crew (e.g. "Leander A") is not enough - we have to know the names of the rowers.

You can see our progress on incorporating data on our trello board.

• Senior British Championships Regatta - 2015, 2016, 2017 (Women's and Men's Sculling events)
• BUCS Regatta - 2016, 2017 (all events)
• Henley Royal Regatta - 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 (all events). We have a lovely set of the Regatta Records to digitise :) If you know of older editions, we'd be interested to hear from you.
• Fours Head 2016 - Sculling and Women's Events
• GB Trials - 4th assessment 2015 (all events), 2016 and 2017 cycles (lightweight, Women's and sculling)
• Met Regatta - 2015 (partly complete), 2016 and 2017 (all events)
• Marlow Regatta - 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 (all events), 2017 (partly complete)
• Henley Women's Regatta - 2017
• We are also looking at including data from international races (e.g. Olympics, World Champs)

Features in the pipeline

You can see our trello live board of where we up on adding features.

• Improvements to the user interface
• Ability to view competitions, events and results more effectively
• Improved filtering of rankings
• Ability for you to correct errors in the results and suggest contributions
• Time data in results
• Lightweight, U23 and U20 data in results
• See Club data, including the current members of a Club
• New statistics for rowers, such as most likely to row with
• Crew comparisons - build crews and see who is more likely to win

Data Protection

A question we have been asked frequently is what our approach to data protection is.

A natural outcome of the existence of this site - in fact, its whole purpose - is that we collate data from publicly available sources to provide a comprehensive database of rowing results. If a race has not published its results, they will not be included on this site.

Currently, our site also only hosts data where the crew members are personally identifiable. This arguably makes it personal data within the definition of the GDPR. We also process all of this data, for the purpose of producing statistical rankings and other analytical information.

The GDPR normally requires consent for the processing of data. However, we do not seek the consent of data subjects for the processing of the data we hold. This is because we believe that (as a research organisation) it is within our legitimate interests to process this data without consent for the purpose of research. We further note that the source data was ultimately provided and placed into the public domain by the original race with the consent of the data subject.

The GDPR also provides a number of rights for data subjects. We claim exemptions from these under the derogations provided by Article 89 of the GDPR (archiving, historical research and/or statistical purposes). We address these in turn:

• Article 15 (right of access). We freely provide all data we hold publicly. This is browsable through our website.
• Article 16 (right to rectification). We would be delighted if you would rectify errors in our data, these are never intentional and are based on the limitations of our source data. Please contact us on the email address above or via twitter if you wish to correct any errors.
• Article 17 (right to be forgotten). We claim exemption from this Article in its entirety (see Article 17(3)(d)). We will not erase any data stored in our database on this basis. Much of the processing we undertake is path-dependent, i.e. the deletion of past data affects the results in the present period. Put more simply, our ranking system updates values on the values of the other competitors in each individual race. If persons were deleted from previous races, this would materially affect the results of future rankings and undermine our research. The exercise of the right in Article 17(1) to erasure of data would render impossible the achievement of the objectives of our research processing.
• Article 20 (right to data portability). We are currently developing an API which will allow individuals to access the data stored on our site in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.
• Article 21 (right to object). We believe that the derogation for archiving purposes over-rides the right of the individual to object to our processing. Further, the continued processing of individual data results is necessary to ensure up to date rankings. The algorithm used to provide this result is path dependent, so a complete history of race results is material. The continued processing of this data is necessary for the performance of our research aims, and we believe this is in the public interest.

For the reasons set out above, we intend to retain all data in our database indefinitely.

In exceptional circumstances, we will consider anonymising data held in our database on an individual basis, i.e. a person would only appear as "Person X" or some other pseudonym. We would need to see a compelling rationale for this as it would significantly and negatively affect our research objectives. If you believe such circumstances apply, please contact us at our email address above.

Our data is currently hosted in the United States.