1800-Olympics.com - Summer Olympics: Olympic Sports: Rowing

An Olympic sport since 1896, oared vessels were used for transport, commerce, fishing, life-saving and war long before rowing up river was considered a leisurely pastime or competitive sport.

Modern day rowing is a highly professional and competitive sport which is carried out from school and club level, right through to Olympic competition. Getting a world class performance in rowing is like trying to get a football team to run a four minute mile in step.

Rowing - Olympic Competition

Women entered the rowing competition in Montreal 1976, and can now compete in six of the 14 medal events.

Races are divided into sculling and sweep oar, with heavyweight and lightweight divisions.

A rower has one oar in sweep rowing and an oar in each hand in sculling.

Boats have one, two, four or eight rowers.

The eights have a cox, who steers the boat and directs the crew. In all other boats, one rower steers by controlling a small rudder with a foot pedal.

Men and women each compete in single, double and quadruple sculls, lightweight double scull, the eight and coxless pair.

Men also race in coxless four and lightweight coxless four.

All boats race in heats, with the top finishers advancing directly into the semi-finals or the six-boat final.

The other boats get a second chance, with the top boats again qualifying.

Men	Women
Coxless Pair Double Sculls Eight with coxswain Four without coxswain Lightweight coxless four Lightweight double sculls Quadruple Sculls without coxswain Single Sculls	Double Sculls Eight with coxswain Lightweight double sculls Pair without coxswain Quadruple Sculls without coxswain Single Sculls

Rowing - Olympic Greats

Vyacheslav Ivanov won three consecutive gold medals for the Soviet Union in rowing's single sculls: at the Melbourne 1956, Rome 1960 and Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games.

Sir Steven Redgrave, of Great Britain, is the only rower to win gold medals in five consecutive Olympics. The winning streak began at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics, in the coxed fours, continued with the coxless pairs in Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996, then culminated with a record fifth gold medal in Sydney 2000; as a member of the British coxless fours team.

Olympic Sports

Rowing Links

FISA:
Avenue de Cour 135, Case Postale 18, 1000 Lausanne 3, Switzerland.
The F�d�ration Internationale des Soci�t�s d'Aviron online; official world rowing site.

National Rowing Associations

Amateur Rowing Association:
The ARA is the governing body for the sport of rowing in Great Britain, responsible for representing Great Britain's interests to FISA, and for the preparation, training and selection of British rowing teams.

Confedera��o Brasileira de Remo: (Brazil).

Deutscher Ruderverband:
Exported from Great Britain, rowing came to Germany in the early 1800s. The first German rowing club was founded in Hamburg in 1836, following an initiative of British rowers living there. Over the next half century, a large number of rowing clubs were founded all over the country culminating with the birth of the German Rowing Association (Deutscher Ruderverband) in March, 1883.

Federaci�n Espa�ola de Remo: (Spain).

F�d�ration Fran�aise des Soci�t�s d'Aviron: (France).

Federazione Italiana Canottaggio: (Italy).

Koninklijke Nederlandsche Roeibond: (Holland).

Rowing Australia:
The first rowing race recorded in Australia took place on May 16, 1818, when a four-oared gig stroked by John Piper, won a race from Bradley's Head on the north shore of Sydney Harbour, to Sydney Cove.

Rowing Canada:
RCA represents 15,000 registered members at all levels -- novices, juniors, university students, seniors and masters -- whether they row for recreation, health and fitness or competition.

Rowing New Zealand:
Covering the regattas in New Zealand.

Schweizerischer Ruderverband: (Switzerland).

US Rowing:
USRowing is a non-profit membership organisation recognised by the United States Olympic Committee as the national governing body for the sport of rowing in the United States.

Rowing Links

River and Rowing Museum:
Located in Henley-on-Thames, The Queen officially opened the Museum on 6 November 1998 and it was awarded Museum of the Year and Building of the Year Awards a year later.

Rowing Directory:
Over 600 categorised rowing links.

Rowing One:
The FISA database contains, athlete biographies, national federation details, rowing club details and past results from 1990.

Rowing History:
An attempt to display some information about the history of rowing with an emphasis on North American rowing. An ongoing project that may grow into a substantial resource on rowing history.

Sir Steve Redgrave:
Possible the greatest rower of our time.

Top Rowers:
An database of athletes who excel at sticking their oar in.