As we head full tilt into regatta season, it can suddenly feel like each race is coming at you at
100 miles an hour, with very little time to reflect before you are preparing to hit the next
event. There is the expectation that a coxswain is on the front foot at all times, always ready
for whatever a race day throws at you, and when you’re at a regatta, challenges can come
thick and fast from unexpected places.
As we all know, exceptional coxing is not simply narrating the perfect race on a perfect day.
Here at The Winning Cox, we believe that the cox that is the biggest asset to their crew is
the one who can successfully manage a wide range of scenarios in order to
give their boat the opportunity to perform at its best.
So the question is, what problem solving tools can you develop to ensure that you can go
into a regatta ready for anything? A great place to start is by doing some scenario planning.
Before I head to any competition, I always complete one simple exercise which helps me to
prepare for race day… I play a game of “What if”. Regardless of whether I have been with
the same crew all season, or if I have raced at this venue before, I will always sit for half an
hour and map out nine or ten different scenarios – from the mundane to the ridiculous, and
consider what my responses should be.
I find this exercise helps me to both feel more prepared whilst also putting into context
some of my more irrational pre-race jitters about racing too – i.e. I don’t imagine I will ever
really be in the scenario where, even if I forgot my tool box, that nobody in the entire
regatta would lend me a 10mm spanner. Ultimately, it helps me to feel ready as I have
already run through the race day in my head in a dozen different ways.
These questions will be a good starting place for you to start working through your own,
crew specific scenarios…
What if I forget something?
o For example – cox box, life jacket, tools, riggers, boats (!)
o This can help you pack properly and consider what spares you have/what
your options would be if you needed to borrow equipment on race day. Can
you use the same equipment as someone else from your club – ie. A cox box
or are the races too close together?
What if someone isn’t where they need to be?
- For example – an athlete sleeps in, your coach isn’t at the briefing etc.
- This can help you consider what is essential and what you need to prioritise.
I.e. If your coach hasn’t arrived to brief you on time, at what point do you
need to make the decision to boat to ensure you won’t be late for the start? If an
athlete has slept in and you end up missing your pre-paddle, what will you do
in the warm-up to ensure the crew is fully warmed up?
What if I forget what I am supposed to be doing when I get on the water?
- For example – you can’t remember the circulation plan, you don’t know what
lane you’re in, you forget the race plan - These scenarios are useful to think about as your response will need to be
different if it is pre-racing or during racing. Before racing, you have a lot of
more options – you can ask a marshal or even the other crews around
you. If you are mid-race, it is down to you and how you stay calm in the
moment. You can also take steps to mitigate against this happening – I.e.
make sure you get the race plan well in advance and avoid major alterations.
Practice delivering parts of the plan during training, try some race
visualisation too with your crew and the morning of racing.
What happens if there is a racing incident?
- For example – someone catches a crab, the cox box breaks, the start gun
doesn’t go off properly
o All of these things have happened to me before at major regattas, and it is
very hard to simulate these incidents during training, as in reality, they are far
more stressful to deal with in the middle of an actual race. Indeed, this is why
I find this exercise very helpful as you can run through your options and make
plans to mitigate the impact. For example, if you have athletes who may
catch a crab, make sure you know how to recover from it and think about
what your restart might need to look like. Or, if the cox box breaks, speak to
the athlete you might want to take over the calls from you. There will be
things that are out of your control, but you can control how you respond to
them.
These are just a snapshot of some scenarios you can begin to work through, and my
suggestions here also don’t touch too much on race strategy and reacting to what your
competition is doing. This is partly deliberate, as your responses will be very crew/goal
specific, but it is worth working through with your coach and with your team.
Usually, I do a lot of this scenario planning alone, but occasionally, I have sat and done it
with a crew. It has been useful to understand what their concerns are and it helps give them
confidence in the robustness of our preparation, but I often find that their “What ifs” are
very different to mine.
Scenario planning is a great tool to have in your arsenal to help you be as ready as you can
be for the unexpected at a multilane regatta, and for me, it is an essential part of my racing
preparation. What is key to remember is… as a cox, you aren’t necessarily expected to go to
a regatta and be 100% perfect, but you are expected to turn up prepared. This exercise can
help you to control the controllable and react well to the unexpected.
