Handicap Manual

For clubs organising racing under CYCA Handicapping, the Association offers a season-long "Handicap Manual Process". This has traditionally been in the fom of a hard-copy manual issued in April; monthly Update Lists are then provided during the season -or "on demand" when required - which contain cumulative lists of boats for which new handicaps have been issued, or revisions made, since the "Datum Date" when the manual was created. These Update Lists are normally emailed to subscribing clubs.

The fee for this service has been £25 for the last 10 years, but rising printing and postage costs require the fee to be increased in 2009.

The Association therefore now offers three modes of operation:

1. No Fee.

Clubs obtain the information they require from the website, using the Boat/Class look-up facility augmented by the additional yearbook-style lists (plus indices) added to the website in Dec 2008.

2. Reduced Fee (£10)

Clubs subscribe to an "electronic manual" service whereby an up-to-date manual is issued as a set of PDFs every month, or "on demand", and print only what they require. The PDFs will in total be about 1MB and easily sent by email. A sample manual can be accessed via the links below (note that the data in these samples is NOT CURRENT and they should not be used in lieu of an official version):

3. Full Fee (£30)

Printed manual plus monthly emailed update lists, as historically provided.

Results Analysis and Feedback

Any handicapping process requires feedback to identify anomalies. The Association would like to encourage structured feedback from clubs, as feedback from owners tends to focus only on handicaps which are perceived to be "tight".

For clubs using HAL's Racing Results, a new version which will hopefully go live for 2009 will produce structured analyses for ANY handicapping system. These can be sent on to the system's owners in whatever format they would prefer.

HRR is free. Clubs interested should access Hopford Associates' website, from which the system can be downloaded. It is already extensively used by CYCA constituent clubs, and the CYCA Hon Secretary can provide further information if required.