Sport Track

A popular water sport - Row, row, row your boat

- Leslie Fernando - Senior sports writer

Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, lakes or on the ocean depending upon the type of race and discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water.

The sport can be both recreation, focusing on learning the techniques required and competitive where overall fitness plays a large role. It is also an Olympic sport. In the United States and Canada, high school and collegiate rowing is sometimes referred to as crew.

The crew and their physical attributes

In all boats with the exception of single sculls, each rower is numbered in sequential order; low numbers at the bow and the highest at the stern. The person seated in the first seat is called the bowman or just ‘Bow’ while the rower closest to the stern is called the ‘strokeman’ or just ‘stroke’. There are some exceptions to the rude.

UK coastal rows and those in France, Spain and Italy are numbered from stern to bow. In addition to this, certain crew members have other titles and role eight member. In a crew the stern pair are responsible for setting the stroke rate and rhythm for the rest of the boat to follow.

The middle four (sometimes called the ‘engine room’) are usually the less technical, but more powerful rowers in the crew. The bow pair are the more technical ones and are generally regarded as the pair to set up the balance of the boat.

Competitive rowing favours tall, muscular athletes due to the additional leverage height provides in pulling the oar through the water as explosive power is needed to propel the boat at high speed.

Open or heavy weight rowers of both sexes tend to be very tall, broad-shouldered, have long arms and legs as well as tremendous cardiovascular capacity and very low body fat ratios.

Olympic or International level heavyweight male oarsmen are typically anywhere between 6’3” and 6’9” (190 cm to 206 cm) in height with most averaging around 6’6” (198 cm) and weighing approximately 225 lb (102 kg) with about 6 to 7 per cent body fat. Heavyweight women are slightly shorter at around 6’1” (180 cm) and lighter than their male counterparts.

How steering is done

Single and double sculls or oars are steered by the scullers pulling harder on one side or the other. In other boats that are fitted with a rudder, it is controlled by the cox, if present, or by one of the crew. In the latter case, the rudder cable is attached to the toe area of one of the crew members which can be pivoted about on the ball of the foot, moving the cable left or right.

The steersman, who has the best vision when looking over his/her shoulder may row at the bow. On straighter courses, stroke may steer, since he or she can point the stern of the boat at some landmark at the start of the course. On international courses, landmarks for steersman consisting of toe aligned poles are provided.

Types of oars and their use

Oars are used to propel the boat. They are long (250-300 cm) poles with one flat end and about 50 cm long and 25 cm wide, called the blade. Classic oars were made out of wood, but modern oars are made from synthetic material, the most common being carbon fibre. An oar is often referred to as ‘blade’ in the case of sweep oar rowing and as a ‘scull’ in the case of sculling.

A sculling oar is shorter and has a smaller blade area than the equivalent sweep oar. The combined blade area of a pair of sculls is however greater than that of a single sweep oar, so the oarsman when sculling is working against more water than when rowing sweep-oared. He is able to do this because the body action in sculling is more anatomically efficient.

Competitions and endurance

Rowers may take part in the sport for their own pleasure as a leisure activity or row competitively. There are different types of competitions in the sport of rowing. In the US all types of races are referred to as ‘regattas’ whereas this term is only used in UK for head-to-head races which take place in the summer season. Time trials occur in the UK during the winter and are referred to as Head races.

Rowing is an unusual sport going by the demands it places on competitions. For example, the standard world championship race distance of 2,000 metres is long enough to have a huge endurance element, involved but short enough (typically 5.5 to 7.5 minutes) to make it seem like a sprint.

This means that rowers have some of the highest power outputs of athletes in any sport. Meanwhile, the motion of rowing involved in the sport compresses the lungs of the rowing crew limiting the amount of oxygen.

This requires the rowers to tailor their breathing to the stroke, typically inhaling and exhaling twice per stroke, unlike in most other sports such as cycling where competitors can breathe freely.

Birth of FISA

FISA stands for the Federation International des Docietes d’Aviron in French. The English equivalent - International Federation of Rowing Associations was founded by representatives from France, Switzerland, Belgium, Adriatica (now a part of Italy) and Italy in Turin in June 1892.

It is the oldest international sports federation in the Olympic movement.FISA first organised a European Rowing Championship in 1893. An annual World Rowing Championship was introduced in 1962. Rowing has also been conducted at the Olympic Games since 1900 (cancelled at the first modern games in 1896 due to bad weather).