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Mountain biking in South Africa really started to take off as a mass participation sport in South Africa in 2007, by 2009 races started to get in excess of 800 entries. In order to keep racing safe and enjoyable organisers have to batch participants of similar ability together. Out of that need SASeeding was born. We started collecting results from different Mountain Bike races across South Africa, and an actuary in the banking sector developed seeding algorithm for us. Initially it was hard to convince race organisers to share their results with SASeeding, but in 2013 we reached a tipping point. Organisers started to realise the value of submitting their results to SASeeding since then many organisers started chasing us to make sure their results are loaded into our seeding system.
Over the years the system evolved considerably, these days we keep track of all Mountain bikers and Obstacle Course Racing athletes results on SASeeding, many athletes don’t even know we have their results from as far back as 2009. An athlete can now log into SASeeding, connect with friends, view their results, view their friend’s results, view their Seeding index and enter for races.
To it is quite complex to calculate a seeding index but the basic principals are simple, we’re now busy with a big drive to better educate athletes on the basics of SAseeding. Basically an athlete must know that we only use your 3 best results, a bad result will not penalise you. Every now & then you can ride with your kids or if you have mechanical or hard fall during a race your seeding will not worsen. But a good result will improve your seeding. Another important principal is that your seeding index age over time, a good result from 2 years ago will only improve your seeding for a while after which the value of the good result decreases.
To find your seeding or learn more visit: www.saseeding.co.za