World Rowing Cup Series 25 years of Speeding Up

The World Rowing Cup series has been running for 25 years, and since the beginning (in its present format) in 1997, boat speeds have increased across all boat classes. The quantities of speed gains, though, haven’t always been consistent.

Creating a calculated uniformity in the time of races from one location to the next was one characteristic of the World Rowing Cup series

World Cup Best Timings, as opposed to World Cup Records, are used to quantify the quickest times. This accounts for how weather and water conditions affect race timings. Best Times are generally set in tailwind circumstances, making it impossible to fully compare one race to another.

While speed increases have scarcely been noticeable in certain boat classes, they have been notable in others.

The timing has been fairly constant for women’s single sculls. The fastest time before to the World Cup series was 7:17. Then, in 2003, in the Lucerne World Cup, Germany’s outstanding sculler Katrin Rutschow set a time of 7:14. She won an Olympic title the following year. For 14 years, this was the best time until Austrian Magdalena Lobnig ran the Malta regatta course in Poznan in 7:13. Lobnig won an Olympic medal at the Tokyo Games.

More changes have occurred in the men’s single sculls in recent years. The timing was about 6:37 when the World Cup series began, and it stayed there until 2011, when it was broken, reset, and then again at a particular regatta. A genuine hotspot of single scullers competed against one another during this pre-Olympic year. Alan Campbell of the United Kingdom set the tone at the Munich regatta course at Oberschleissheim with a time of 6:36 in Heat 1.

He didn’t maintain the top time for very long since the quick Czech, Ondrej Synek, shaved off a second in the subsequent heat. Once more, this time it was brief. Local rower Marcel Hacker set a new record in Heat 3 by clocking in at 6:33.

2012 London Olympics: Campbell took home the bronze medal, while Synek earned silver. Hacker was ranked sixth.

Hacker hung on to his best time for six years before New Zealand’s Robbie Manson smashed it by three seconds when racing in Poznan. 6:30 was the new World Cup Best Time.

There has been a noticeable rise in speed in the men’s eight. In 1999 the time sat at 5:25, achieved by Russia on the waters of Lucerne’s Rotsee. This time got obliterated by the Australians in 2006 when the Aussie crew went 5:21 in Poznan. In the boat was Karsten Forsterling who would go on to win bronze in the quad at the 2012 London Olympics and follow it up with silver, also in the quad, at Rio.

The Australians hung on to the best time until 2012 when Canada went below the 5:20 threshold and recorded 5:19 in Lucerne. The crew then took silver later in the year at the London Olympics. One member of the boat, Conlin McCabe is still an active rower and at the Tokyo Olympics he finished fourth in the men’s pair.

The men’s eight best time was broken again in 2017 when Germany recorded 5:18 on a hot June day in Poznan. This best time remains today although many of the crew have retired.

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