SSC Racing About Seed Points

All race information is centralised in one location, GBSki (gbski.com). GBSki is managed by a group of people from GBSnowsport and the HNGBs. This group also manage the “seeding systems” where all U14+ registered racers can score ‘seed points’ and be placed in the national ranking system. To score points, racers must register with one of the home nations (i.e., Snowsport Scotland) as a competitor, which requires them to be a member of an affiliated club (which Scottish Ski Club is). You can find out about competitor registration athttps://www.snowsportscotland.org/competitor

Minis (U10 and U12) races are never seeded, however it is possible to become a registered racer as a mini (you just won’t get seed points).

Many of the races which run throughout the year are ‘seeded’. Seeded races show the stopwatch icon next to the organiser’s logo on the GBSki calendar. Some seeded races will accept entries from unregistered competitors (though those individuals won’t score points), but most seeded races require entrants to be registered racers.

The seeding system involves a lot of calculations which take a lot of time to understand, so here is a short summary:

• All racers begin with 999.99 points upon first registration.
• Racers will score ‘race points’ for each race they finish – these are calculated based on how good the points of the winners of the race were, and how far behind the winner you are. The lower the points, the better.
• Seed ‘lists’ are published periodically, and a racer’s ‘list points’ (the points shown on the list) will be either their best race point result plus 10%, or the average of their best 2 race point results.

Seed points are sometimes used to set entry criteria for some races, e.g., the British Children’s Championships. Generally, though, they allow you to compare two racers over a period of time, even though they might not have actually raced each other. This makes the seed point lists an effective national leaderboard of ski racers.