Amsterdam hosts Euro Open

The 2004 indoor rowing trek finishes up the year in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, when over 1,600 people will participate in the Euro Open this weekend.

The Sporthallen Zuid will be alive to the sound of whirring Concept 2 ergometers this Saturday 18 December as competitors race over the 2,000-metre distance in the second year of this now annual event.

The event has attracted a number of top rowers including Olympians Akos Haller of Hungary, Mads Rasumssen and Rasmus Quist of Denmark, Dutch bronze medallists Marit van Eupen and Hurnet Dekkers.

Dekkers is the current Dutch record holder on the indoor rowing machine. She finished in a time of 6.30 in 2001 after only two years in the sport. Dekkers has been part of the Dutch national team for the last four years and this year she won Olympic bronze in the women’s eight at Athens.

The Euro Open was organised for the first time last year in Paris with the idea coming from the growth of the sport. Great Britain’s Concept 2 representative Alex Dunne saw that more and more Europeans, particularly British, were travelling to other countries’ national championships because they were looking to compete in more races. 

“We decided to designate a different European race for the (Euro) Open each year,” says Dunne. Next year the competition will move to Copenhagen, Denmark.

United States Concept 2 representative Robert Brody is bringing a top team of 12 to Amsterdam. The team includes five current world record holders in their age groups and up and coming junior, 16-year-old Chris Pomer who began using the ergometer when he was 11. Earlier this year Pomer won the CRASH-B indoor rowing competition in Boston, United States, with a time of 6.03. He will compete in the biggest event of the competition – the junior men – against 100 other competitors.

Brody has noticed the increasing trend of non-specialist rowers who have never rowed on the water in his 20 years involvement in the sport. He lists three of the Unites States record holders as never having been in a rowing boat.

“Indoor rowing has become a sport in its own right,” says Brody. “I think it’s a great trend but I don’t think it will take the place of on-the-water rowing.”

For more information on the Euro Open click here.

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