World Rowing Indoor Championships goes to Paris

For immediate release
Lausanne, 1 March 2019

The 2020 World Rowing Indoor Championships is heading to Europe. Paris will host the competition over the weekend of 7-8 February 2020.

The Paris attribution was announced during the 2019 World Rowing Indoor Championships which was held last weekend in Long Beach, California. At the end of the championships a formal ‘handing over’ of the World Rowing Federation, FISA, flag took place with French Rowing Federation President Jean-Jacques Mulot accepting the flag from FISA President Jean-Christophe Rolland.

The 2020 World Rowing Indoor Championships will take place over two days as they will run at the same time as the French Indoor Rowing Championships.

This will be the third year of the World Rowing Indoor Championships which first took place as such in 2018 in Alexandria, USA.

The championships are staged in partnership with Concept2, manufacturers of the indoor rowing machines utilised at this event.

“We held the first two championships in the United States in full cooperation with Concept2. Concept2 not only supply the hardware and technology for such an event, they also support participation of international rowers and also actually help run it,” say Rolland. “Now it is the moment to move the event outside of the United States. Paris and the French Rowing Federation proved to be fully ready to host the championships and we have already seen a huge amount of interest generated since we first made the announcement. We know that Paris is the right choice.”

“After the success of Long Beach, we’re already looking forward to Paris,” says Peter Dreissigacker, Founder, Concept2. “The French Rowing Federation has always put on a great indoor rowing event and with the support of World Rowing we’re sure they can continue to move the event forward.  Taking the race over to Europe will help showcase what an international sport this is.”

The French Rowing Federation in their media release announcing the event: “The French Rowing Federation is delighted to be able to organise this competition and welcome athletes from all over the world.”

The World Rowing Indoor Championship racing will take place in open and lightweight categories as well as junior, under-23, para and masters categories.

Indoor rowing continues to grow as a rowing discipline in its own right as it has become more than another training tool for on-water rowers. Indoor rowing machines can now be found in fitness gyms, CrossFit facilities, rehabilitation clinics, schools, universities and urban sports settings all around the world.