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I didn’t get to Varese, Lucerne, or even Henley this year to see those great regattas in person, but I did spend about a quarter of May in New Jersey witnessing the IRA and NCAA national championship regattas.
For all five regattas, I, like thousands of others, had the best views of the astounding racing, fast times, and remarkable results achieved by some of the world’s greatest rowers.
On both the Cooper River in Camden County and Lake Mercer in Mercer County, you had to be there to appreciate fully how bad the wind and water conditions were—and how well most crews handled them, whether they should have been racing in those conditions, or not. And when you wanted to know what was happening at every point of the racing, all you had to do was look at the huge video screens showing the livestream coverage.
For the European regattas, drones and multiple other camera angles delivered video images even better and more dramatic than you’d see in person and in vivid high-definition clarity. At the World Rowing Cups, drones appeared to fly at, around, and in between the crews as they raced, providing an even better view than that of the coxswains.
From the continued dominance of the Romanian women’s eight at Lucerne to the outrageous and repeated upsets handed out by Finn Hamill at Henley, you could watch, and rewatch, why successful coaches warn their crews about getting overstroked and why the size of the fight in the dog is more important than the size of the dog in the fight.
It’s all possible thanks to the rapid improvements in video coverage, commentary, and digital delivery going on right now in rowing. Never has the myth “it’s not a great spectator sport” been less true.
