This blog covers all aspects of the rich history of rowing, as a sport, culture phenomena, a life style, and a necessary element to keep your wit and stay sane.
Photograph: Werner Schmidt
Showing posts with label World Rowing Championships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World Rowing Championships. Show all posts
On 1 August rowing historian and journalist Christopher Dodd wrote here on HTBS about the 1976 Henley Royal Regatta. Just a couple of weeks earlier, on 13 July, he had written a 'prelude' to that piece on his own blog Rowingvoice. In that article he remembers how he, as the rowing correspondent for The Guardian, and Jim Railton of The Times had arrived at Rotsee in Lucerne for the 1974 World Championships. Dodd's "Hot times in the Cold War" is an entertaining story about Henrietta's bar and the hostess's party trick, the British eight's disastrous race in the semi-final, how the eight's cox, Pat Sweeney, worked his boat through the other nations' crews one by one in the final and how the Championships ended with a tear gas attack by Swiss police trying to break up the athletes' after-race party - while the party band continued to play on.... They don't make regattas like that anymore.
In June earlier this year, a video on the eights final at the 1974 World Championships was uploaded on YouTube, see below. (There are no race commentaries, but close to the 500-metre mark, at 2:32 min., Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "Takin' Care of Business" - released in January 1974 - starts to play and will follow the race to the finish line.)
In a press release from yesterday, the International Rowing Fedaration, FISA, writes that its member federations elected Jean-Christophe Rolland of France as the future President of FISA on the first ballot at the 2013 Ordinary Congress in Chungju, South Korea. Rolland received 117 of the 179 ballots cast. The required absolute majority was 90 votes. Other candidates John Boultbee (AUS) and Tricia Smith (CAN) received 50 and 12 votes respectively.
Rolland holds a Master Degree in electrical, electronics and communications engineering and has worked for EDF, one of the world’s leading electric utility companies, since 1993. At first an engineer, then a regional Deputy Director, he was appointed the Human Resources Director of his business unit. Rolland managed EDF’s sponsorship programme with the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee. Rolland participated in three Olympic Games, winning bronze in Atlanta and gold in Sydney. He has five World Championship medals, including two gold medals. Appointed to FISA’s Athletes Commission in 1994, Rolland served as Chair of the Commission between 2002 and 2011 and served on FISA’s Executive Committee from 2004 to 2011, at which time the FISA Council appointed him as a co-opted member.
Rolland will assume the presidency in July 2014, when the current president Denis Oswald will step down from the position. Denis Oswald, FISA president since 1989, announced earlier this year at FISA’s 2013 Extraordinary Congress that he would seek re-election but only for a transitional period of six to eight months. The FISA Council decided to stage the election of Oswald’s successor at the same Congress in order to assist the newly elected ‘president-elect’ in the transfer of knowledge and introductions to the international sports world.
The Congress also elected Tricia Smith (CAN) as Vice-President, winning 98 of a possible 178 votes. Smith was running against the incumbent Vice-President Anita DeFrantz (USA). In addition, Michael Williams (GB), the current Treasurer, was re-elected unopposed. The final elections that took place were for the three commission chairs who also serve on the Executive Committee. The Council had to wait for the outcome of the election for the President and Vice-President elections before proposing the remaining three members of the Executive Committee: Mike Tanner (HKG), John Boultbee (AUS) and Lenka Wech (GER). The delegates voted to approve the proposal. Wech, the only new member of the Executive, is the Chair of the Athletes’ Commission.
Denis Oswald, FISA president since 1989, is retiring next summer, and will be succeeded by Jean-Christophe Rolland.
At the end of the meeting, the Congress unanimously adopted a proposal of the FISA Council to name Denis Oswald ‘FISA Honorary President for Life’, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to rowing over the past 36 years. Three World Rowing Championship regattas were attributed by the Congress with unanimous decisions: the 2017 World Rowing Championships to Sarasota, USA, 2018 World Rowing Championships to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and the 2015 World Rowing Under-23 Championships to Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The FISA Council also announced its decision to award the second World Rowing Cup of 2015 to Varese, Italy, and the third World Rowing Cup to Lucerne, Switzerland. Lucerne will host the second World Rowing Cup of 2016 along with the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta, and the third and final World Rowing Cup of 2016 will be held in Poznan, Poland.
Bids for the first World Rowing Cup of 2015 and 2016 had been requested from outside Europe, but following a review of the World Rowing Cup in Sydney in 2013 and 2014, it was decided that bids from within Europe should be considered, so the Council announced that these events would not be attributed at this Congress. Bidding has therefore been reopened and both events will be awarded in December 2013. Three additional events were attributed by the FISA Council: the 2016 World Rowing Masters Regatta to Copenhagen, Denmark, the 2017 World Rowing Masters Regatta to Bled, Slovenia and the 2015 World Rowing Coastal Championships for Clubs to Lima, Peru. The latter marks the first World Rowing Championship event to be awarded to South America, and the first time that the World Rowing Coastal Championships will take place outside of Europe.
Five new national federations were admitted as members of FISA: Benin, Botswana, Mali, Saudi Arabia and St. Vincent & Grenadines. This brings the total number of FISA member federations to 142.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the eighth day of the 2013 World
Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju,
South Korea, here and here. If you missed to watch any of the races, go here.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the seventh day of the 2013 World
Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju,
South Korea, here.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the sixth day of the 2013 World
Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju,
South Korea, here and here.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the fifth day of the 2013 World
Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju,
South Korea, here.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the fourth day of the 2013 World Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju, South Korea, here.
With weather forecasts predicted storms to arrive in Chungju tomorrow, Thursday, the finals in the five Para-rowing events had to re-schedulled for today. Temperatures reaching 30+ Celsius and under cloudy skies and almost flat water, it was ideal conditions for racing. FISA’s race reports are here.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the third day of the 2013 World Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju, South Korea, here. As a storm with torrential rain is expected in the afternoon on Thursday, 29 August, races will be rescheduled with some heats being raced on Wednesday, 28 August. Read more about the changes here.
You will find FISA’s race reports for the second day of the 2013 World Rowing Championships on the Tangeum Lake regatta course in Chungju, South Korea, here.
The 2013 World Rowing Championships have now started in Chungju, South Korea. Today’s racing included heats in ten boat classes on the Tangeum Lake International Rowing Regatta course. Read FISA's race reports here.
Last Sunday, World Cup III ended in Lucerne, Switzerland. Following is the story of a special boat that was used by a U.S. crew to take the 1974 World Championships at Rotsee in Lucerne.
When visitors to Mystic Seaport – the Museum of America and the Sea, located in the village of Mystic, Connecticut, walk through the doors of the Visitors Reception Center at the Main Gate, the first thing they see, if they look up, is a magnificent racing shell hanging from the ceiling. This eight, the Martini Achter, is not only an indicator that the NRF’s National Rowing Hall of Fame is housed at Mystic Seaport, it is also on display because it has a remarkable place in the history of American rowing.
In 1973, after having raced at the European Championships in Moscow, a U.S. crew went to compete at the Heidelberg International Regatta in what was then West Germany. At Heidelberg, the Americans were short of one man in the eight race, the “Martini Achter Race”, where first prize was a brand new wooden eight which was built by the famous German boat builder Empacher in Eberbach. Joining the American oarsmen, Larry Gluckman, Calvin Coffey, Mike Vespoli, Hugh Stevenson, Terry Adams, Tim Mickelson, Ken Brown and Paul Hoffman, was the British rower Hugh Matheson (known to HTBS readers from entries about Chris Dodd’s brilliant book Pieces of Eight, published in 2012).
At the 1973 Heidelberg International Regatta, United States was the winner of the Martini Achter: Bow
Larry Gluckman, 2 Calvin Coffey, 3 Hugh Matheson(GBR), 4 Mike Vespoli, 5
Hugh Stevenson, 6 Terry Adams, 7 Tim Mickelson, Stroke Ken Brown and
Cox Paul Hoffman. Coach Steve Gladstone. From Peter Mallory's The Sport of Rowing.
In Peter Mallory’s splendid bookThe Sport of Rowing (2011), Gluckman is quoted saying that ‘Everybody wanted to win this beautiful Empacher wooden boat. It was like a piece of furniture.’ Norway entered a boat, too, and after the Americans had won the race, and the boat, Gluckman continued, ‘the Norwegians said, “Good row, America... and God Bless the Queen” because they knew one of our borrowed rowers, Hugh Matheson, was a Brit.’The Martini Achter stayed in Europe and came to belong to the NRF's fleet.
The following year, 1974, a slightly different U.S. crew went to compete at the World Championships in Lucerne, Switzerland, using the Martini Achter. The crew were: Bow Timothy Mickelson, 2 Kenneth Brown, 3 John Everett, 4 Mike Vespoli, 5 Mark Norelius, 6 Richard Cashin, 7 Hugh Stevenson, Stroke Alan Shealy and Cox David Weinberg, and Coach was Allen Rosenberg.
Here is a 3-minute film showing the eight practicing in the early summer of 1974 on Candlewood Lake in Connecticut before moving on to another training camp at Princeton, and then to Lucerne.
On the Rotsee, in an extremely tough race, which came to be known as “The Race of the Century,” the U.S. eight competed in the final against the world’s best rowing nations at that time, East Germany, Soviet Union, New Zealand, Great Britain and West Germany. New Zealand was in the lead for the first 1,800 metres, but then the crew in the Martini Achter put on a spurt which gave the Americans a slight lead. They managed to hold on to it and crossed the finish line as the World Champions. Another remarkable crew were the British who took a silver medal, despite having been dead last for most of the race. New Zealand came in third, East Germany forth, the Soviets fifth and West Germany sixth.
The Martini Achter was afterward used by the men’s varsity eight from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, to win the 1976 Ladies’ Challenge Plate at the Henley Royal Regatta, and by the University of Washington men’s varsity eight to take the 1977 Grand Challenge Cup, also at Henley. Later the boat was sold to a club in England.
In an e-mail to HTBS, Mike Vespoli writes, that some English oarsmen
...rowed it over a submerged shopping cart and tore a big hole in it. It sat in rack at the Thames Tradesmen Rowing Club where I found it and bought it for 500 British pounds and brought it back to the U.S. I contacted my boat mates from the ‘74 crew and we all chipped in to get the boat restored so that we could take a row in 1999 at the world champs in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada to celebrate our 25th anniversary. The restoration cost four times the original sale price!
The Martini Achter was restored by boat builder Graeme King in Putney, Vermont. He spent around 200 hours restoring the shell to its former beauty, he has told HTBS. It took 420 hours to build it originally and then the hull was formed by vacuum with three layers of Spanish cedar veneer over a mold. After that, the framework was fitted in. When restoring the shell, King used 3/32” plywood, then laminated on a sheet of 1/32” African mahogany veneer.
Here is some data of the Martini Achter:
Builder: Empacher boat builder, Eberbach, Germany.
Length: 57 feet
Weight: 250 lbs (boat), 8 oars, total 60 lb.
Top Speed: Over 3 miles, 18 feet/second; in a sprint, 22 feet/second
The last words go to Mike Vespoli:
If Mystic Seaport ever decides to remove the shell from public display then we [the ’74 crew] would take possession of it. It was also agreed that we could use this shell in 2024 to celebrate our 50th!
If this ever happens, HTBS promises to be there taking a picture.
Michiel Jonkman sent HTBS a link to an incredible ‘old’ race from 1990 that I must confess I have totally forgotten. Lesson to be learned? Don’t forget to cover the flanks! That goes for both the athletes and sport commentators. Over to the 1990 World Championships in Tasmania, men’s lightweight double sculls:
Hammer Smith is at it again! ‘What?’, you say if you never heard of this hero, whose fight against injustice within the noble sport of rowing has been going on for decades. Rumour has it that he has sworn to devote parts of his life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice in all their forms in rowing. No one knows who he is – it’s a assumed he’s a gentleman – but I might have met him once, at least, at the 1987 Rowing World Championships in Copenhagen. I believe that the poor Danes forever lost any chance to organise another really big international rowing regatta as the 1987 rowing show was so terribly unfair due to bad weather which led to every boat racing in lane 1 (or was it lane 6?) inevitably coming in dead last. It became a very unfair regatta, indeed. Now, I have to confess that it has slipped my mind if there ever was any hullaballoo in writing about these championships, but if there was, I am certain Hammer Smith wrote it.
For myself, I and some dear rowing friends from my Swedish rowing club witnessed a day’s races at these Championships from the comfortable area of the marvellous restaurant overseeing the regatta course. Now, the Danes know how to make a dinner last forever, as long as there is enough snaps – and there was at this occasion… When we finally found our way back to Sweden (I vaguely remember a trip with a ferry), it seems our club’s treasurer had bought the USA men’s eight, a Vespoli. I don’t know if the old boy purchased the Americans’ boat before or after the dinner at the restaurant.
But back to our hero Hammer Smith, on 17 June he had an interesting article published in the Rowing Voice. Read and enjoy Hammer Smith’s article about dirty rowing business in ‘Olympic watch: dirty deeds in the docks’.
Yesterday, the World Rowing Championships ended in Bled. Whether a favorite boat or crew took a gold, silver, or bronze medal, or maybe totally missed to get to the A-final, or even failed to qualify for next year’s Olympic rowing in Great Britain, at times the whole entire event could turn a little hyper. Following some of the top athletes from a distance, their success or failure, I have to confess that I felt that the roots of rowing felt far away.
Earlier this year FISA, the International Rowing Federation, launched a new brand identity: “The Soul of Rowing”, and doing so also redesigned the organisation’s website and adding a short video to promote its new “brand”. Rowing is now “about the human spirit”, it is said, and the sport of rowing is like a Far East art. For the visitors to the FISA website, there is even a text explaining what we are watching, probably because otherwise we would not understand what on earth is the meaning of this nonsense. I am sorry FISA, but you have been had by the agency you hired to “renew” yourselves. To view the gobbledygook, see above.
So back to the roots of rowing. Enter Mr. Bob Egle! I had no idea whom Mr. Egle was until I happened to stumble over his film “Rowing – A Digital Short” on YouTube where I was looking for a rowing clip. Now, here is a fellow, who does not know anything about your sport, but sees the local school, Upper Arlington High School Rowing Team (in OH) on the river, and, in an attempt to understand the sport, makes a film about the school’s rowing team. He puts some young rowers, boys and girls, in front of the camera and allows them to talk about our sport. Listen to what they are saying, words like: team work, camaraderie, power, trust in team mates, nervous, cruelest sport, tension, hardest sport, awesome feeling, food, FUN……
Listen, yes, but also watch how these young people’s faces shine when they talk about rowing. I think this little film is lovely as it explains what our sport is truly about. This film made me want to go out on the river right away to feel how the shell is running underneath me, and I can imagining what the film can do to get other young girls and boys to take up rowing.
Well done, Bob Egle & and the rowers at Upper Arlington High School. FISA – watch and learn!
Racing in the final day of the 2011 World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia has been changed to now start at 9:33 (CET).
Due to the weather forecast, racing in the B-finals on Sunday, 4 September 2011 will commence at 9:33 and run for an hour. The A-finals will start as below:
10:23am LTA Mixed Coxed Four (LTAMix4+)
10:33am Lightweight Men’s Quadruple Sculls (LM4X)
10:46am Lightweight Men’s Eight (LM8+)
10:59am Men’s Four (M4-)
11:14am Lightweight Women’s Double Sculls (LW2x)
11:29am Lightweight Men’s Double Sculls (LM2x)
11:43am Women’s Single Sculls (W1x)
To get all the results from the World Championships, please click here.
HTBS received a press release from the National Rowing Foundation yesterday. It reads,
To all members of the U.S. Rowing Community:
Today is the day that the US National Rowing Team begins racing at the 2011 FISA World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia. Over the next seven days 84 athletes will compete in 26 events for the USA! This year the World Championships is also the first Qualification Regatta for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, and our team will be racing to qualify 14 boats for the Olympic Regatta that begins in 334 days, on July 28, 2012.
The US Team is ready to race! If you want a behind the scenes look in Bled during the World Championships, go to our website at www.natrowing.org and follow the links to the National Rowing Foundation Facebook page, Twitter account, and YouTube page. These links will give you a unique perspective of what is happening with our US Team.
Our team needs relies on the support of all of us to keep our US National Rowing Team successful. Please consider making a donation to help the US Team today.
Best Wishes,
The National Rowing Foundation
...in our 45th year of supporting athletes in pursuit of excellence!
National Rowing Foundation
67 Mystic Road
North Stonington, Connecticut 06359
Email: natrowing@comcast.net
Here is a funny thing I first saw on Chris P.'s eminent blog, Rowing for Pleasure.
Not even at the airport in Munich, on their way to the 2011 World Championships in Bled, Sovenia, did Great Britain’s heavy men’s eight get some rest. Practice, practice….
The video is featuring Phelan Hill, Dan Richie, Tom Ransley, Greg Searle, Moe Sbihi, Alex Partridge, James Foad, Cam Nichol, Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell, and Marcus Bateman. Video done with some help from Pete Reed.
The good fellow Bernard Hempseed on the other side of the world, New Zealand, that is, has sent me a very interesting e-mail about some rowing books. First he mentions that Frank Cosentino’s book Ned Hanlan (first published in 1978) in “The Canadians” series is going to be republished, and then he writes,
“Recently I picked up a new rowing book. It is called Reflections of Gold, A Celebration of New Zealand Rowing by Peter Bidwell. It is not a history of rowing in New Zealand as such but rather concentrates on the history of the NZ eights. They won the gold at the 1972 Olympics. It also covers Mahe Drysdale, Rob and Sonia Waddell, Beijing Olympics, some women’s rowing, and a few other events. Overall NZ crews and singles have done rather well at Olympic and World Championship levels. Club or school rowing is not described except where it involves the larger picture. The book was published in 2010, I assume in time for the World Championships here. At about 255 large format pages with many coloured photos it is a handsome publication. It was a reasonably expensive book when it was published but perhaps the sales were not as anticipated as it has been remaindered at a steep discount.”
Thank you, Bernard, for this information. I have looked around if the book is available in the USA and in Great Britain. So far, the book is available only in the ‘Kindle edition’ at Amazon. However, without really being sure, the great, great Richard Way Bookshop in Henley might have it?
It seems a major sport event in New Zealand last weekend had a problem with spectators consuming too much alcohol. These drunken spectators abused other spectators and threw full and empty beer bottle at others in the crowd. Am I talking about the spectators at the World Rowing Championships on Lake Karapiro? No, of course not! Although, it was written that “Almost 70,000 spectators attended the week of competition [at Lake Karapiro]. They drank copious quantities of beer in the hot sun and they roared and stamped and banged their seats in an effort to cheer the Kiwi crews home.” However, the writer goes on saying “they did not throw missiles, abuse the opposition or brawl in the stands.” Instead, this was something that happened on Saturday 6 November when there were two matches at Eden Park, which is New Zealand’s largest stadium, Papa New Guinea v. England Rugby League, and New Zealand v. Australia Rugby League.
It seems to have been so bad at Eden Park that some sport journalists in the New Zealand media now would like to ban alcohol from all major sport events in the country. Read two articles about this here and here.
Personally, I do not think the problem is that beer and other drinks are available at certain sport events, the hitch is who is drinking the alcoholic drink, a brawl-loving brainless, stupid dimwit or an intelligent devotee of a good sport, like rowing, for example…
‘Hear the Boat Sing’ (HTBS) was founded in 2009 by Göran R Buckhorn, a Swede living in Connecticut, a magazine editor, culture scribe and a rowing historian. In 1990, Göran co-founded the Swedish rowing magazine, “Svensk Rodd”, for which he is now a contributing editor. He has written numerous articles on rowing, and is one of the Directors of Friends of Rowing History and a member of BARJ, the British Association of Rowing Journalists. Regular contributors to HTBS are: rowing historians Tim Koch and Greg Denieffe, both in England; Hélène Rémond, France; and Philip Kuepper, Connecticut. Besides writing articles on The Boat Race, the Henley Royal Regatta, the Wingfield Sculls, and the Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race, Tim has made some rowing documentaries. He is also a Director of the Friends of Rowing History and a member of BARJ. Greg is an Irishman who specializes on Irish rowing. Some of his finest pieces are on HTBS. Hélène, who wrote her thesis on British rowing, has covered The Boat Race and the Henley Regatta for French papers and HTBS, also shooting beautiful photos for this blog. Philip’s poems on rowing have topics about everything between the daily life and the divine.
Racing in the final day of the 2011 World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia has been changed to now start at 9:33 (CET).
HTBS received a press release from the National Rowing Foundation yesterday. It reads,
The good fellow Bernard Hempseed on the other side of the world, New Zealand, that is, has sent me a very interesting e-mail about some rowing books. First he mentions that Frank Cosentino’s book Ned Hanlan (first published in 1978) in “The Canadians” series is going to be republished, and then he writes,
It seems a major sport event in New Zealand last weekend had a problem with spectators consuming too much alcohol. These drunken spectators abused other spectators and threw full and empty beer bottle at others in the crowd. Am I talking about the spectators at the World Rowing Championships on Lake Karapiro? No, of course not! Although, it was written that “Almost 70,000 spectators attended the week of competition [at Lake Karapiro]. They drank copious quantities of beer in the hot sun and they roared and stamped and banged their seats in an effort to cheer the Kiwi crews home.” However, the writer goes on saying “they did not throw missiles, abuse the opposition or brawl in the stands.” Instead, this was something that happened on Saturday 6 November when there were two matches at Eden Park, which is New Zealand’s largest stadium, Papa New Guinea v. England Rugby League, and New Zealand v. Australia Rugby League.
