A Year In Review – Coastal Rowing

In our final look back on the 2021 season, we take a look at what happened in the world of coastal rowing.

Coastal rowing continued to grow in popularity with the endurance and beach sprint options providing different formats of racing. Whilst coastal rowing certainly attracts new people to the sport, the timing of this year’s events allowed many seasoned ‘flat-water’ rowers, including recent Olympians to also try their hand at this exciting variation of the sport.

Having not been held in 2020, the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals and World Rowing Coastal Championships were hosted this year in Oeiras, Portugal, and attracted record entries. Praia de Torre (“Tower Beach”) was the venue, a beautiful sandy beach, with the sea providing perfect conditions for racing.

The first event to take place was the Beach Sprint Finals where competitors combined sprinting across the beach with battling through the waves in boats designed especially for this innovative format of competition. Rowers from 25 nations took part in the beach sprints with Spain topping the medal table with three golds. Two of Spain’s golds came on the first day, in the mixed double and mixed coxed quadruple scull.

In the men’s solo, a fast start and flawless navigation from Italy’s Giovanni Ficarra couldn’t be matched by Norway’s Olympic medallist from earlier this year, Kjetl Borch. Meanwhile, the final of the women’s solo provided one of the closest races of the day when Brienne Miller of Canada beat Maya Cornut of France to the line by just half a second.

The 2021 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals also featured five junior (under 19) boat classes. Afonso Santos of home nation Portugal was the first on top of the podium, winning the junior men’s solo with Tunisia’s Hela Belhaje Mohamed wining the junior women’s category. On the second day of racing, Spain won the junior men’s doubles, Sweden the junior women’s doubles, and France overcame the USA in the mixed junior doubles.

Just four days after the conclusion of the Beach Sprint Finals, the World Rowing Coastal Championships got underway in the same location. This was the endurance event, with racing taking place over a 4,000m course for heats and B-finals and extended to 6,000m for A-finals.  The three days of racing provided all sorts including capsizes, penalties for false starts and missed navigation buoys, and a wide range of racing conditions.

Nine of the 34 competing nations took medals home with Ukraine topping the medal table with three golds, one silver and one bronze. They set the tone from the first boat class, winning the women’s coxed quad with a crew of experienced flat-water rowers including double-Olympian and multiple indoor rowing record holder Olena Buryak. Two other members of the crew, Yevheniia Dovhodko and Daryna Verhogliad also won bronze in the women’s double later in the day, with fellow Ukrainians Kateryna Dudchenko and Anastasiia Kozhenkova taking gold in the same boat class. Ukraine’s third gold came in the men’s coxed four where they finished ahead of the Czech Republic who had overcome a ten second penalty for a false start. However, Diana Dymchenko, who had won gold for Ukraine in the women’s solo at the previous three World Rowing Coastal Championships had her run bought to an end this year by Stefania Gobbi of Italy.

It was also a very successful championships for Spain with an impressive two golds, one silver and four bronzes. Two of Spain’s medals were won by Adrian Miramon Quiroga. In the men’s solo, Adrian, as defending world champion, capsized at the first turning buoy, but made a miraculous recovery and worked his way back through the field to win bronze. His fellow countryman, and Tokyo Olympian, Jaime Canalejo Pazos, took gold. Both Miramon Quiroga and Canalejo Pazos picked up further medals in the mixed doubles, a boat class that saw Spain take all three places on the medal podium.

Hot on the heels of the World Rowing events, the second edition of the European Rowing Coastal Challenge was held on the western coast of Italy at the end of October. 175 rowers from 15 European nations took part in the competition staged in the Tyrrenian sea, including Tokyo Olympians and medallists from the 2021 World Rowing Coastal Championships and Beach Sprint Finals. Host nation Italy topped the medal table with four gold medals, just one more than Spain.

The 2022 calendar will see not only World Rowing Coastal events but also European Rowing events too. Whilst Saundersfoot in Great Britain will host the World Rowing Coastal Championships and World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals, San Sebastian in Spain will host the European Rowing Coastal Championships.