Two-time Olympians and legends in the men’s single, Simon van Dorp and Oliver Zeidler will go head-to-head in a dual style race in Berlin starting at the Mühlendamm Bridge and finishing at the Reichstag building on Saturday, October 12, for the World Sculling Finalist title.
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The race will be modeled after the “World Sculling Championship” which dates back to 1863. There are no heats or qualifying rounds—just one all-or-nothing battle. The vision for the event is to grow to have a global presence, incorporate a women’s race and offer prize money for winning athletes and their respective clubs.
“I was always trying to find new ways to promote rowing,” said Oliver Palme, founder of German rowing newspaper Rowing1.com who proposed the idea to the Berlin State Rowing Association. “I started with this idea three years ago to showcase scullers exceptional endurance and strength. The idea was to bring back history.”
Zeidler and van Dorp have met several times this past summer. At 2024 World Rowing Cup II van Dorp took away a gold in the men’s single finishing 2,000 meters in 06:48.29, a second faster than Zeidler. However, at the Paris 2024 Olympics Zeidler claimed the gold, a full seven seconds ahead of van Dorp, who won bronze.
“Whoever is the trophy holder—next season we want to give out a ranking so you can earn points if you participate at the World Cup and World Championships and the guy who has the highest ranking after the season is allowed to challenge the trophy holder. The idea is to promote the rowing clubs and the rowers and showcase what kind of exceptional athletes they are and bring this kind of race to Berlin. We try to promote rowing a little bit out of the box.”
The race not only invokes sculling from the past, but it will make history itself as one of the few races to be held right in the center of Berlin. Additionally, it has taken lots of effort from a planning perspective due to the increased security for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the city.
“We had to overcome some organizational problems because [Joe] Biden was planning to come to Berlin. When Biden comes to Berlin the whole city is blocked and there’s a very high security level. He moved his visit because of the hurricane [Milton] but now Zelenskyy is coming and it’s also the highest security level. We will be impacted by the visit, but we are in close contact with the administration and police forces and have permission for the race. It’s really historic and unique to get this regatta in the middle of Berlin.”
The race will be broadcast on worldsculling.com on Saturday, October 12 starting at 12 p.m. CEST/6 a.m. EST.
