Power and speed at 2019 World Rowing Indoor Championships

For immediate release
Long Beach, 25 February 2019

In its second year the 2019 World Rowing Indoor Championships in Long Beach, CA, USA saw over 700 indoor rowers go after the world championship titles.

Leading the way was the fastest woman in the world on the indoor rower, Olena Buryak of Ukraine. Buryak holds the world record for women over the 2000m distance and she added another accolade to her name by winning, for the second time, the open women’s title. Buryak’s time of 6:25 also saw her break her own record in the 30-39-year-old age group. Brooke Mooney of the United States was second with Tracy Eisser, also of the US, in third.

In the open men’s category Oliver Zeidler of Germany took the world championship title. Zeidler is the 2017 World Games winner and also rows on-the-water for the German national team. Behind Zeidler was Arne Landboe taking the silver and Alexander Richards the bronze medallist. Both Landboe and Richards are part of the United States national rowing team with Landboe an under-23 gold medallist from 2018.

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Both the men’s and women’s open categories had a huge showing from the United States national rowing team. This included World Champion coxswain, Katelin Guregian racing in the lightweight category.  

A very tight race in the under-23 men’s category between Belgium’s Ward Lemmelijn and Charles Alexander of Canada saw the race go neck-and-neck through to the finish with Lemmelijn finishing less than a second ahead of Alexander. Lemmelijn won the European Indoor Championships last month and his world championship time gave him the Belgian indoor record. Local Long Beach rower, Cole Guild was third.

The lightweight men’s open category was won by Germany’s Jason Osborne. Osborne is the reigning World Champion in the lightweight men’s single sculls and he held off Martino Goretti of Italy to add another title to his sporting career. Goretti finished three seconds down to take the silver medal with Alex Twist of the United States in third.

Mexico had the largest team at the Championships and they garnered success in the under-23 lightweight men’s category with a first and second place win. Alexis Lopez became the world champion and Adolfo Peralta finished just a second back in the silver medal spot.

Two World Records were set in the masters age groups. Thomas Darling of the United States set a new record in the 60-64-year-old heavyweight age group and Luanne Mills of the United States broke the 80-84-year-old women’s category. Both Mills and Ellefsen have many years of indoor rowing racing experience.

The 2019 World Rowing Indoor Championships combined with the inaugural US Rowing Indoor National Championships and also the Long Beach Rowing Association Beach Sprints. The competition was organised in partnership with Concept2 indoor rowing machines.

Paris, France was announced as the host city for the 2020 World Rowing Indoor Championships, bringing the event to Europe for the first time.

For more information and full results: http://www.worldrowing.com/events/2019-world-rowing-indoor-championships/event-information