cMax Rankings

As a reader already noted, the cMax rankings are out. With only a few races under our belt this early in the season, they're not as meaningful as they will be later. As you know, I really like these rankings. They take the human element out of it (although that isn't always bad) and rank based only on cold, hard, facts. Because lightweight women is one of the categories with the fewest participants (DII will eventually have less), the rankings can be difficult. For example, a crew like Bucknell, that for the most part doesn't race lightweight boats until the IRA, may never make it onto the ranking because they have no category results (for this same reason they're not on my list). For an explanation of how these rankings are put together look here.

Chris Maxwell does an incredible job of gathering the data and crunching the numbers for these rankings. Just imagine tracking every single race reported on row2k and you'll get only some idea of the effort he puts into it. Chris has been kind enough to help me out with data from time to time and I'm grateful for it.

I could embellish the Windermere and Knecht previews with predictions based on these rankings but as Chris notes, "with so many teams not in the rankings yet, it's a little premature to start predicting team strength." Tempting though it may be, I'll wait until we have more data.