Rowing’s answer to snowcross, BMX and beach volleyball is coming to LA

AAt a time when most rowers are pounding rivers in the wind and rain during the dark winter months, a new breed is honing their skills in brighter climes, surrounded by sun, sand and waves, all the while dreaming of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Of the 17 sports that the International Olympic Committee proposed an additional discipline, rowing came out on top, with the addition of the beach sprint format to the LA 2028 program. While many may have noticed the addition of five new sports: baseball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash, a mini revolution is taking place on the water within a sport that will no longer have a lightweight category, but will have five coastal rowing events by 2028.

Coastal beach sprints shake up this most traditional and predictable of sports, by taking the core elements of rowing – a need for extreme levels of fitness and psychological toughness – and adding new layers of danger and a beach party atmosphere. The discipline involves head-to-head competition and starts on land, with athletes running along the beach and jumping into their boats at the water’s edge, then racing around a buoy before racing back to dry land, jumping out of their boats and sprinting upwards. the beach. In frequent close finishes, their finishing move is to hurl themselves through the air to hit the finish line buzzer first and, usually, land with a face full of sand.

In a world where people have greater choice over which sports they want to watch and participate in, and world federations of smaller sports are considering how to remain popular and relevant, coastal rowing offers a less predictable and more enjoyable format, while at the same time reconnecting with a historical activity that dates back to around 1900 BC in ancient Egypt, where it was an important means of transportation.

We may be a football nation first and foremost, but this is a great addition for Team GB as we also excel in seat sports and boats are part of our national island identity. We are also getting a new impetus to revive sport and activity around the coastline in areas that are among the most socially and economically vulnerable parts of each of the homelands. The Welsh Government identified that the funding for its major sporting events was going to the big cities and realized the importance of reaching and involving a different part of the population by hosting the World Coastal Rowing Championships in Saundersfoot and developing the Wales International Coastal Center there.

Scotland has embraced the sport, with St Andrews University investing in the wider flat boats used to row the rougher waves and setting up to become one of eleven British rowing academies at East Sands Beach. Meanwhile, Glenarm in County Antrim hosted the All-Ireland Coastal Rowing Championships this summer for both beach sprint and endurance coastal rowing events. England’s coastal academies include clubs in Tynemouth, Scarborough, Whitby and Lowestoft, in addition to many south coast clubs with a strong heritage in the activity. Sandbanks in Dorset was the venue for the first Commonwealth Beach Sprint Championships in 2018, followed by Namibia in 2022 and Barbados next weekend.

Britain’s Guin Batten, a member of the Sydney 2000 silver medal crew and one of the first British female rowers to stand on a podium, has set the logistical and political course to get to this point. As chair of the World Rowing Coast Commission in her spare time (and deputy chief executive of Volleyball England), Batten describes the two disciplines of coastal and classical rowing as the “yin and yang of the sport”, different yet beautifully complementary, both at their core about brilliant boating skills and athleticism and yet each offering such a contrasting spectacle to watch or take part in.

Boat costs and accessibility issues have been cleverly reduced – the wider boats are suitable for beginners and those racing at the highest level, unlike the incredibly narrow hulls that require significant expertise to master still-water rowing. Countries do not have to fly their equipment over as there is a pool of boats available, which adds another element of uncertainty as competitors will only try out the actual boat they will be racing in two days before competing. At that point they will have to study the boats and in particular the fin positions on the hull, which will be crucial for working out the optimal techniques for rounding the buoy, knowing that they will have to reassess everything the day they see the size of the waves that Mother Nature throws at them.

New Zealand’s Emma Twigg, the 2020 Olympic single sculls champion and five-time Olympian, has rekindled her love of boating by taking up the coastal discipline and won at the recent world championships in Turkey. Twigg told me she fell in love with beach sprints because of the “proximity to the racing,” “the beach volleyball vibes,” plus the benefit of being able to watch the entire race from start to finish in the mini-stadium area, avoiding one of the insurmountable challenges of Olympic rowing on still water, where you can never see the entire 2km distance from one vantage point.

Like their classic still-water cousins, coastal rowers will still need to develop a formidable physiology that can both sprint and sustain to compete in up to three races a day. Every race is a lung-busting, all-out effort with an arm-wracking, shoulder-shuddering effort to make a 180-degree turn around the buoy mid-race. New Zealand Olympian Finn Hamill missed the buoy by inches and was eliminated from the recent world championships, while Germany’s leading favorite Moritz Wolff stumbled in the beach sprint semi-final, allowing Spaniard Ander Martin to come through in the final seconds to face reigning American champion Chris Bak in the final, who retained his title. There is a mix of existing rowers switching to this new discipline and others coming from coastal clubs, while sports scientists and performance directors figure out what future coastal Olympians will look like.

The world’s best coastal rowers will share the Long Beach LA venue with open water swimmers, windsurfers, foil and kite surfing champions over the fortnight of the Games, showcasing a different side to this otherwise seemingly difficult sport. Rowing’s answer to snowcross, BMX and beach volleyball is coming to LA, but if you live close to the coast it might soon be coming to a beach near you.