Twenty Years of Para Rowing at the World Rowing Championships

The 2022 World Rowing Championships mark a big anniversary in the sport. It has been sixty years since the world championship event was first held, and twenty years since the inclusion of para events (outside of previous editions where para rowing had been “presentation races”).

Para races (then called “adaptive rowing”) were included as presentation races starting in 1993 at the World Championships in Racice, Czech Republic. There were two races: one race in single sliding seat, contested by 6 nations, and one race in fixed seat, contested by 3 nations.

The same presentation races were planned for 1994, but were cancelled due to legal issues. The second presentation races were held at the 1995 World Championships in Tampere, Finland.

From the late ‘90s, World Rowing started to work internally to form a stand alone commission and start to standardise the boats and lobby the IPC for the inclusion of para rowing in the Paralympic Games.

While the original plan was to hold the first para races at the 2001 World Rowing Championships in Lucerne, this did not happen. The Lucerne venue at the time was not able to host para rowers. There were no inclusive pontoons, bathrooms, or any pavement on site. The venue for the following World Rowing Championships in Seville, Spain was accessible.

The 2002 event featured two adaptive boat classes: the adaptive coxed four, and the single sculls, which was open to both men and women.

The adaptive coxed four was won by Australia, with Spain and the USA completing the podium. In the single sculls, Scott Brown of the United States took the gold, fellow American Angela Madsen took the silver, and Aussie Peter Taylor took the bronze.

Para rowing was first contested at the Paralympic Games in 2008 in Beijing, China. Four boat classes were contested. A fifth boat class was added to the Paralympic programme for the Paris 2024 Games.

In 2017, the racing distance for Para was changed to 2000m, and the boat classes were switched over from A, TA, LTA to PR1, PR2, PR3.

The 2022 World Rowing Championships will be contested by 72 para rowing crews over 9 boat classes. Racing kicks off 18 September 2022 at 9:30 CET.