Similar to most clubs, at the Texas Rowing Center, our masters team coach  inflicts erg tests on his voluntary athletes. The victims are a pretty diverse group; from some tiny 60+ women, to young  6’5” men and everything in between. Of course, the old or tiny claim that raw times do not reflect their contribution to moving the boat, or their excellent physical condition.

I decided to investigate whether the published age, weight and sex correction factors enabled a fair comparison across the squad - and   found that it does.  The corrected erg scores do not indicate which athletes will win a race – of course the youngest and fittest will win.  But it does remove most of the variation in the sample, leaving just rowing fitness and erg technique as the residual factors. Interestingly, the athletes that collect most medals at Nationals Masters across all weights and ages generally had the better corrected times, suggesting that the corrected results give an indication of masters  race performance.

Please note, the corrected times are a referenced to a nominal 27 year old, 270 lb, male  athlete, so the times are for comparison to other corrected times only.

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More details in the paper.

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Published on row2k  8/1/17 as "An all things
considered erg competition"