60 Fun Facts About Rowing

In the United States, the sport of rowing is commonly known by what one-word name?

The name comes from the crew of a boat, and college programmes in the US still call themselves crew teams.

What is the key difference between rowing and paddling sports?

Rowlocks (or gates) fix the oar to the boat and turn it into a lever; a paddle is held freely.

In which discipline of rowing does each rower hold two oars, one in each hand?

In sweep rowing each rower holds one oar with both hands, so sweep boats always have an even number of rowers.

How long is the standard course for Olympic and World Championship rowing races?

Masters rowers often race 1,000 m and sprints can be as short as 500 m, but the championship distance is 2 km in buoyed lanes.

Where did competitive rowing begin, with races among professional watermen in the early 1600s?

The watermen were the taxi drivers of their day, ferrying passengers across the river, and prizes were put up by the London Guilds and Livery Companies.

Which college formed the first American college rowing club, in 1843?

Nine years later it began racing Harvard, and that regatta became the oldest intercollegiate sporting event in the United States.

Rowing was on the programme of the first modern Olympics in 1896 but no races took place. Why?

Men have raced at every Games since 1900, making rowing one of the oldest Olympic sports despite the false start.

At which Summer Olympics was women's rowing first contested?

Adding women's events gave national federations an incentive to support women's crews, and the sport grew quickly afterwards.

The world's oldest surviving rowing race, first held on the Thames in 1715, is named after what prize?

Up to six apprentice watermen still race it every year, and the winner receives a red coat with a silver badge.

Thomas Doggett, who founded the watermen's race in 1715, was known for what profession?

He was joint manager of the Drury Lane Theatre and relied on watermen to ferry him between the City and his home in Chelsea.

The 1715 Thames watermen's race badge displays the horse of which royal house?

The badge also carries the word Liberty and marks the accession of George I in 1714.

Founded in 1818, which club is the world's oldest public rowing club?

Its pink colours are famous at Henley, and the second-oldest surviving club is Der Hamburger und Germania Ruder Club of 1836.

The first Boat Race between the two great English universities took place in which year?

It was only the second intercollegiate sporting event ever, two years after the first Varsity cricket match.

The Boat Race is rowed on the Thames between which two points?

The Championship Course is 4.2 miles, more than three times the length of an Olympic race.

In the Boat Race, which university's crew wears light blue?

Oxford took dark blue in 1829 because five of its crew came from Christ Church, whose colours were dark blue.

The men's Boat Race has ended in a dead heat only once. In which year?

The judge, John Phelps, had no way of separating the crews at the line and could only call it a tie.

What happened to the two crews during the 1912 Boat Race?

Cambridge also sank in 1859 and 1978, and Oxford in 1925 and 1951, when the race was re-rowed the following Monday.

The 2012 Boat Race was halted for over 30 minutes when a protester did what?

Australian Trenton Oldfield said he was protesting spending cuts and elitism; the race was restarted from a point near where it stopped.

Henley Royal Regatta was established in which year?

The town started the regatta after the interest generated by the early Boat Races, and it has run every summer since except in wartime and 2020.

What is the most prestigious event at Henley Royal Regatta?

It is a race for men's eights and has been awarded since the regatta was first staged in 1839.

Coubertin modelled parts of the IOC on the organisers of which rowing event?

Henley's self-perpetuating body of Stewards pre-dates any national or international rowing federation.

The Head of the Charles Regatta is held on a river separating Boston and which city?

Around 11,000 athletes in more than 2,500 boats race the three-mile course each October.

The oldest and most famous head race, held each March on the Thames, was founded in 1926 by whom?

Head racing was exported to the United States in the 1950s, where the Head of the Charles became the largest rowing event in the world.

In a head race, how do the boats start?

Boats set off 10 to 20 seconds apart and are timed, so the fastest crew is awarded the title Head of the River.

In a bumps race, what is a crew trying to do?

Oxford and Cambridge colleges race bumps twice a year, and the finishing order sets the starting order the following year.

In an eight, which rowers are responsible for setting the stroke rate and rhythm?

The middle four are known as the engine room, while the bow pair are the technical rowers who balance the boat.

What is the nickname for the middle four rowers of an eight?

They are usually the biggest and most powerful members of the crew rather than the most technical.

Under World Rowing rules, what is the minimum weight for a coxswain?

An underweight cox has to carry dead weight, such as sandbags, so no crew gains an advantage from a tiny steerer.

In a bowloader boat, where does the coxswain sit?

Bowloaders are usually coxed fours and coxed pairs, and the cox looks over the rowers' backs at the course ahead.

The moment a rower places the oar spoon in the water at the start of a stroke is called what?

The stroke runs catch, drive, extraction, recovery; the glide of the boat between strokes is called run.

Rotating the oar so the spoon lies parallel to the water during the recovery is known as what?

The blade must be squared again just before the next catch, and rushing this is a classic beginner's fault.

The thin cuts on the back of a rower's calf or thigh caused by the seat rails are nicknamed what?

Blisters on the hands are the other near-universal rowing injury, especially early in a career.

Why is a double scull faster than a coxless pair over the same course?

Sculling applies force symmetrically to both sides of the hull, so the boat needs less bracing and moves more efficiently.

What is the maximum weight for any individual male rower in a World Rowing lightweight crew?

The crew average must be 70 kg; for women the average is 57 kg with no rower over 59 kg.

The sport's governing body, founded in 1892 as FISA, holds what distinction?

It was later renamed the World Rowing Federation and now has more than 155 national members.

The annual World Rowing Championships were first held in which year?

FISA had run a European Championships since 1893; the worlds now feature 22 boat classes against 14 at the Olympics.

The Concept2 rowing ergometer was created by which two brothers?

Their 1981 Model A used a bicycle wheel with fins for air resistance; the 1986 Model B added a digital monitor and launched competitive indoor rowing.

Which 4th-century BC Athenian admiral is credited with the first rowing machines?

Modern machines are called ergometers because they measure the work a rower performs.

Steve Redgrave won Olympic gold at how many consecutive Games?

The run went from Los Angeles 1984 to Sydney 2000, and he did it while managing ulcerative colitis and diabetes.

After his 1996 Atlanta gold, Steve Redgrave said anyone who saw him near a boat again could do what?

He was back within months and won a fifth gold in the coxless four in Sydney four years later.

With which long-time partner did Steve Redgrave win three of his Olympic golds?

The pair's coxless-pair gold in Atlanta was the only gold won by the entire British team at those Games.

The most decorated Olympic rower, with five golds, comes from which country?

Elisabeta Lipă won her first gold in 1984 and her last in 2004, a record 20-year span, and later became her country's sports minister.

By what margin did Ekaterina Karsten win the women's single sculls at the 2000 Sydney Olympics?

The Belarusian edged Bulgaria's Rumyana Neykova in one of the closest finals in Olympic rowing history.

The Boys in the Boat tells of which university's eight winning gold at the 1936 Olympics?

Daniel James Brown wrote the book after meeting Joe Rantz, the crew's last surviving member, through a neighbour.

New Zealand's Mahé Drysdale, a two-time Olympic single sculls champion, was named after what?

He won his first world title in 2005 despite breaking two vertebrae in a collision with a water skier earlier that year, and later became mayor of Tauranga.

Katherine Grainger won Olympic gold at London 2012 after silvers at how many previous Games?

She and Anna Watkins won the double sculls; she then took a fourth silver in Rio and later became Chancellor of the University of Glasgow.

A funerary inscription of 1430 BC praises which Egyptian warrior-pharaoh for feats of oarsmanship?

Scholars still disagree over whether ancient Egypt held actual rowing contests; Virgil's Aeneid includes rowing in Aeneas's funeral games.

In which century did Venetian festivals called 'regata' include boat races, giving English its word regatta?

Modern competitive rowing grew from professional watermen's races on the Thames in the early 1600s.

The second-oldest surviving rowing club, founded in 1836, is in which German city?

Der Hamburger und Germania Ruder Club marked the beginning of rowing as an organised sport in Germany.

The Schuylkill Navy, the oldest amateur athletic governing body in the US, unites rowing clubs of which city?

Founded in 1858, its member clubs sit along the river's historic Boathouse Row in Fairmount Park.

At which 1954 event were the first international women's races in the sport held?

Women's Olympic rowing did not follow until Montreal 1976, which spurred national federations to back women's crews.

Roughly how long is a sweep oar, compared with a 250 to 300 cm sculling oar?

The flat spoon at the end is about 50 cm long and 25 cm wide, and modern blades are usually carbon fibre.

Which October regatta in Boston is now the largest rowing event in the world?

Head racing was exported from Britain to the United States in the 1950s.

At what age may athletes compete in World Rowing's 'Masters' categories?

The World Rowing Masters Regatta has several age subcategories beyond that threshold.

What is the US collegiate lightweight cutoff for men in the fall season?

Women's collegiate lightweight is 135 lb; World Rowing introduced lightweight classes to broaden the sport to less statuesque nations.

How many boat classes does World Rowing recognise for adaptive, or para, rowers?

They include PR3 (formerly Legs, Trunk, Arms), PR2 (Trunk and Arms) and PR1 (Arms and Shoulders) categories.

In 2017 FISA dropped a lightweight men's event from the Olympics in favour of which women's event?

The World Championships still run 22 boat classes, but the Olympic classes are considered the premier events.

Which discipline was added to the Olympic rowing programme for the 2028 Games?

The 2024 Games were the last to include lightweight rowing events.

Who wrote The Amateurs, a book about four young men's quest for Olympic rowing gold?

He wrote that every race was 'as much a race against yourself as it was against opponents'.

In which year were lightweight rowing events first introduced at the Olympic Games?

The IOC's programme commission had wanted to scrap weight-category events outside combat sports as early as 2002.