Safe, Fair, and Fast

The three attributes we rowers should aspire to as a sport and community are safety, fairness, and speed.

Boat speed wins races. How to achieve that race-winning boat speed is the tricky part, one we spend all year trying to solve. Or, in the case of the pinnacle of boat speed, Olympic rowing, all four years.

For the 2024 Paris Olympics, U.S. head Olympic coach Josy Verdonkschot had less than three years, owing to the Covid-caused delay of the last Games, followed by USRowing’s slow hiring. And yet he was able to lead USRowing’s Olympic efforts back to the pinnacle for one event, the men’s four.

Now he’s got the full four years to plan and prepare for America’s first home Summer Games in more than 20 years, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. He spells out how he intends to do so in the 2025-2028 High Performance Plan, which Rowing News covered in the February issue of the print magazine. Spoiler alert: It’s underfunded.

Meanwhile, in Canada—which won six medals at those last summer American Games in 1996—a new leader has been selected from one of the great crews of the glory days, Jeff Powell, stroke of the 2002 and 2003 world-champion men’s eights. Read the entertaining stories of how he came to be the new CEO of Rowing Canada in the Rowing News interview.

Fairness has many manifestations. Boats should start even at the beginning of a race. Coaches should give every member of the program a reasonable shot at making the first boat. But we should recognize also those who don’t have the same opportunities to row that we did, and do something to make access to our great sport more fair.

That’s exactly what the George Pocock Rowing Foundation, Hudson Boat Works, Concept2, and others are doing with the A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund. Read about their latest good work, and then read about Louisiana’s Xavier University, the latest college to add varsity rowing, partially as a result of that good work..

Safety is the most important attribute of our sport. No one should die rowing. And for the first time known to us, USRowing members achieved a zero-fatality year in 2024. As Rowing News reported, USRowing’s recent emphasis on safety and safe practices coincides with this important accomplishment. Rowing News is proud to serve the rowing community with advice about how to navigate the risks of rowing on cold water from USRowing Director of Safeguarding Tom Rooks, who also served in the United States Coast Guard.

“This progress shows our growing commitment to safety, but it’s up to all of us to maintain that momentum,” Rooks said. “Our sport is only as safe as any rower or coach’s next decision.”