25 July 2024
By Tim Koch
Tim Koch on rowing and the five-ring circus.
Despite the fact that it has been on the programme of every Olympic Games of the so-called “modern era” (i.e. since 1896), it is no secret that some people on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) do not, for various reasons, like rowing.
Some are concerned that rowing is dominated by the wealthy and traditional rowing nations from Europe, North America and Australasia. At the Tokyo Games, 37 of the 42 rowing medals were shared between Australia, New Zealand, Canada and twelve European and two Scandinavian countries. China and the “Russian Olympic Committee” took the remaining five. Perhaps such domination is not unique to rowing but opening a debate on this is to take the top off a tin containing many long cylindrical tube-like bilateral invertebrates.
Perhaps the biggest problem is with numbers. Fourteen rowing events with no doubling up means a lot of athletes and there will be 502 rowers at the Paris Olympic Regatta. Thus, a minority sport will have just under 5% of the total number of people competing in the entire Games. Britain and the US have 42 rowers each and The Netherlands is next with 33. Recently in Junior Rowing News, Alliott Irvine wrote:
It is well documented that the International Olympic Committee has expressed intentions to reduce the number of rowing events and athletes at the Olympics, in order to create more capacity to introduce other sports that it believes will be able to attract a new and more diverse audience to the Olympic Games. It is also hoped that many of these new disciplines may also create opportunities for a more varied range of nations to be represented on the largest sporting stage.
Under the current Olympic Charter, the total number of athletes is limited to 10,500. So, if the IOC is to introduce new sports, either other sports have to be cut completely, or the number of athletes that are competing for a sport has to be reduced. We are already seeing this process happening with the move by World Rowing to drop lightweight rowing from the Olympic Program in favour of the introduction of (beach sprint) rowing at LA2028.
Alliott Irvine continues:
If a nation was to qualify every single boat for the Olympics it could have 48 athletes in total racing. With the loss of the lightweight double for LA2028 this only brings down the rowing team to a maximum of 44 rowers, and with spares and support staff this means that rowing still dominates team sizes at the Olympics.
Apart from “people problems”, there is the issue of the actual rowing course. Providing a course over 2,000 metres long and eight or more lanes wide with many rules on depth, shelter and other fairness related issues is not cheap or easy. Further, purpose built courses in particular can have “legacy” problems.
Once a little-considered concept, “Olympic legacy” is nowadays a big part of the bidding process by potential host cities. It concerns the long-term benefits that each Games creates for the host city and its people. Stressing legacy has become an increasingly important way for bidding committees to sell the idea of holding a Games to their city’s permanent residents.
This “sell” is becoming more and more difficult because of increasing costs and organisational problems plus growing environmental and security concerns. These are all exacerbated as the IOC constantly adds to the list of Olympic events. Further, the initial Olympic bidding process encourages underbidding with the result that many Games inevitably go far over budget, three-and-a-half times over in the case of Rio.
There were originally six cities bidding for 2024 but local protests forced Boston, Hamburg, Rome and Budapest to drop out, leaving only Paris and Los Angeles.
In response to this diminishing interest in hosting the Olympic Games, in June 2019 the IOC approved some amendments to the Olympic Charter including giving priority to venues that have existing sports facilities and infrastructures. Cities that promise to build new infrastructures, “will only be taken into account if their strategy is aimed at ensuring a sustainable legacy.”
One of the main reasons that Brisbane, Australia, has been chosen for the 2032 Games is that it claims that 68% of the infrastructures already exist. Rowing will be at the Queensland State Rowing Centre on the Wyaralong Dam. The course could be ten lanes and is already heavily used for rowing. Rowing Australia ticked the “sustainable legacy” boxes when they wrote:
This (dam) currently holds about 60 local and state-based rowing events, including 35 regattas each year… This demonstrates its ability to address important impact and legacy infrastructure outcomes for the 2032 Games… Beyond 2032, this venue will serve as an important location for local, state, national, and potentially international regattas…
Another school of thought on making international rowing courses cheaper to produce and at the same time possibly making rowing events more exciting for the casual spectator and viewer is to reduce the standard international length from 2,000 to 1,500 or even 1,000 metres.
The 2,000m course only became standard in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics (except for London 1948, where it was 1,850m). Before this, Paris in 1900 was 1,750m, in St. Louis in 1904 it was 3,218m, and in London in 1908 it was 2,414m. Women’s races were raced over 1000m between 1976 and 1988 when they were changed to 2000m. Strangely, LA2028 will be the shortest Olympic rowing course ever.
While many in rowing will be defensive about the 2,000 metre course, reducing this distance may be the price that the sport has to pay for the exposure, sponsorship and money generated by the Olympic Games and also for protecting the soon to be twelve “classic” olympic rowing events (men’s and women’s pairs, fours, eights and single, double and quadruple sculls). It could further be argued that, as there will be no lightweight Olympic rowing after 2024, those lightweights whose events have disappeared may find it easier to win a crew place in sprint-like shorter distance racing.
World Rowing President, Jean-Christophe Rolland, has insisted that the shortened 2028 Olympic distance is a one-off and has said that “we know the specificity of the effort has to be a minimum of five minutes”. Over 1,500 metres, not every boat class would take over five minutes. The current world records over 2,000 metres are, for example, 5m 18s for a men’s eight and 7m 07s for a women’s single. Over the shortened course, this could mean around four minutes for the men’s eight and around five-and-a-quarter for the women’s single.
Rowing will always be a minority sport but inaction on making it more accessible and commercially attractive may mean that it will also become an increasingly obscure one. HTBS Types are great supporters of tradition but we need to remember the aphorism (variations of which are attributed to different people) that “tradition is the passing on of the fire, not the worship of the ashes.”
The Olympic Regatta runs 27 July – 3 August. The five-event Paralympic Regatta runs 30 August – 1 September.