Operating a high performance rowing team while living with Covid-19

With cases of Covid-19 on the rise again globally, teams are needing to review their protocols especially while travelling to international competitions. Dr Mike Wilkinson and Dr Ann Redgrave are the Chief Medical Officers for the Canadian and British Rowing Teams respectively. During the World Rowing Cup III in Lucerne, Switzerland, we caught up with them to hear how they are currently managing Covid within their teams.

“With Covid, we don’t have a lot of hard research data and especially not in elite athletes. A lot of people have been trying to gather it and we have been going on best science consensus and expert opinion”, said Mike Wilkinson, highlighting the need to constantly review protocols.

For the British team, they have remained cautious. “We are still running on protocols that we wrote a little while ago. When the country was opening out and testing was stopping, we chose to carry on. At Caversham, [the GB Rowing Team Training Centre] every athlete on site has to test twice a week still. If they have any symptoms at all, they are still not allowed on site. We tell them that they have to stay at home. They have to test again on the day that they have symptoms. If they are positive, we revert to our protocols and if they are negative we try to keep them off site until their symptoms have settled down.”

Speaking about their preparations recently, Dr Redgrave said they were concerned particularly as many of the team were competing at Henley Royal Regatta ahead of World Rowing Cup III. “I did give them a lecture, I said “If you want to go to Lucerne, then you have got to think about what you’re doing, you’ve got to remember that Covid is still here and there will be people at Henley that have got it. The best advice I can give you is stay outside and keep your distance, if you’re going to be inside then put a mask on”.” It seems that their cautious approach paid off.

The Canadian team suffered from positive cases around World Rowing Cup II in Poznan and Dr Wilkinson said they have subsequently concluded that the issues came during travel. “Your highest risk is in the airports”, said Wilkinson. “We are lucky in that we are in an outdoor sport, but it can lead to a false sense of security because we’re outside.” He continued, “The other challenge that we have is convincing athletes, team members to follow those protocols when within the general public, all of those have disappeared now.”

Redgrave also expressed the need for extreme caution around international travel; “We still think that planes are a problem. We’ve never dropped our travel protocols. We all do a lateral flow the morning before we travelled. We all wear masks in the airport, we all wear masks on the plane, and we wait until we get out safe somewhere before we stop wearing them. We’ll carry on doing that and review again probably at the end of the season.”

Asked on how they see things developing, both Doctors generally agreed.

“I think it is going to be adapting the whole time. Vaccines are going to adapt. The basic principles of hygiene, masks, distancing and vaccination are still the things that work. Even though it’s not 100%, it’s the best that we have”, said Wilkinson.

Redgrave added : “I think Covid is going to stay with us unfortunately. It is never going to be a common cold. There’re still too many consequences of Covid. Ultimately, we’re going to end up having to vaccinate the younger population more and that probably means that teams are going to have to buy their own vaccines, just like we do with the flu vaccines every year.”