World Rowing Web Site Breaks Records

Crowds on finals day at Milan
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The World Rowing Championships did not just have large crowds at Milan's Idroscalo course. Throughout the world people clicked onto Worldrowing.com and pushed the number of users to record proportions.

During August 2003 the web site page impressions grew to over two million, boosted by the World Junior Championships at the start of the month and the senior World Championships at the end.

During the Junior Championships daily usage grew to about five times that of a normal day while during the World Championships daily usage leapt to over 30 times normal daily usage. The biggest surprise was the 260 percent increase in usage during the 2003 Junior Championships when compared to the Junior Champs last year. This jump is partly a reflection of the addition of the live race viewer link and enhanced interest from the event doubling as the Olympic test regatta.

Interest in this year's World Championships was reflected in a 33 percent increase of site usage over the 2002 World Champs in Seville.

Worldrowing.com is in the fourth year of its current form and during that time features on the site have developed with technology. The live race viewer was implemented in 2000 in time for the Olympic Games and has since expanded to take in the World Cup, World Championship and, most recently, the World Junior Championship regattas.

Last month the World Rowing Championships tested live race video streaming during the three finals days. This provided video footage of the races for any user outside of Europe (in Europe Eurosport covered the races). Although only announced one day prior to going live, the live race streaming attracted close to 10,000 users. Archives of the races can still be viewed on the web site and will be available until the end of September. Unfortunately it is still embargoed in Europe due to television rights contracts. The United States topped the usage list for video streaming followed closely by Canada and Australia with audiences also recorded from throughout the Middle East and Asia.

The most site interest during this year's World Championships registered on semi-finals day, with 340,000 page impressions, when races not only decided who would be in the A-final but also narrowed down those boats likely to qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games.

Keep an eye out for new web site features as indicated on the home page's left hand column.