Three records broken at Dutch Ergohead

This indoor rowing competition required competitors to row as far as they could in 20 minutes and Juliane Rasmussen of Denmark set a record in the lightweight women’s category by rowing for 5,432m. Also from Denmark, Steffen Bonde set a record in the lightweight men’s category with a distance of 6,156m. The third record stayed locally with Dutch national team member Roel Braas winning the men’s open covering 6,433m.

Both Rasmussen and Braas are current national team athletes for their respective countries. Rasmussen raced at the 2011 World Rowing Championships in the lightweight women’s double and Braas is part of his country’s men’s eight. Rasmussen’s average split for her record setting distance was 1:50.4 per 500m while Braas averaged 1:33.3. For Braas’s piece he followed a race plan of keeping a very steady pace and holding a stroke rate of about 27 for the entire 20 minutes.

This year’s Ergohead attracted nearly 300 competitors from Denmark, Great Britain, Norway and from throughout the Netherlands.

 The Dutch junior competitors had an added incentive to do well as the junior nat,ional team coaches and selectors were amongst the large audience that packed the grandstand at the Universum at Science Park Amsterdam. Junior hopeful Wies Rebel was part of a close race to the line against Laila Youssifou for the under-17 category. Rebel came first breaking a 10-year-long record by completing 5,142m. The selectors commented that they were very impressed by the junior rowing.

For the first time this year adaptive rowers had to beat a bottom limit of 2:26.0 per 500m . Agmaja Kolman won her category rowing at an impressive 2:19.6 pace for 20 minutes. There were also Masters categories. One of the oldest competitors was 68-year-old Egbert Willems. Willems completed 4,906m which is an average spilt of 2:02.3.

The Ergohead has been going since 1997 and began as a 6k race. Five years ago this was changed to 20 minutes to avoid slower rowers having to continue after the winners had finished. Organiser Stefan Kools says it has made the competition more manageable: “The 20-minute race makes the event more attractive and saves time so that we can have medals after each race.”

For more information: www.ergohead.nl