Ergohead presents unique indoor rowing event

For the first time, the Ergohead was held at the Friendship Sports Centre, located in the north of the city.  The Friendship Sports Centre provides facilities for disabled people to practice sport. Inspired by this message, the Ergohead relocated and decided to raise money to benefit the Centre.

As a part of the fundraiser, Olympians, juniors and elite rowers sat side-by-side to race a ten minute relay. Four teams of four rowers each gathered in the first row of ergs and as the DJ blasted music, the race got underway. The composite team, including Dutch Olympian Roel Braas, started the fastest. No one could match Braas’s blistering 1:13 per 500m split. After 30-45 seconds, the rowers leaped off, to be replaced by one of their fresh teammates. Ten minutes of music, cheers from the crowd and exhaustion for the athletes later, the composite team was declared the winner, rowing 3342 metres.

Braas’s team also featured the winner of the under-16 junior category, Lisa Bruijnincx and Danish Olympian Juliane Rasmussen and Olympic Champion Mads Rasmussen. Juliane Rasmussen and Bruijnincx had both competed earlier in the day in their respective 6km and 20 minute races.

Rasmussen, who holds the world record in the lightweight 6km category, declared several days before the event that she intended to break her record. However, it was not her day. Rasmussen finished just five seconds short of her record, covering the 6km distance in 22:02.3.

“I was really hoping and thinking that I could break the record,” Rasmussen said. “It was a tough one. I think I am in shape to break the record, so it was a great challenge and that’s what it is all about with records. It is not easy to take them so you have to have the day, and the head, and the body, everything has to be in place at the right time.”

Bruijnincx, however, smashed the junior record. She completed 5213 metres in 20 minutes, an average of 1:55.1. This broke the four-year-old record by 55m.  

Paralympic rower, Corne de Koning raced against Paralympic handbiker Tim de Vries. De Koning went further covering 2727m in ten minutes. 

For more information and complete results, please visit: http://www.ergohead.nl/en/