“Mega Worlds” 2024: Canada’s Henley Island makes ready with one year to go

There is no mistaking the roar of the crowd as the penultimate day of finals get underway in early August at the 139^th Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. The races continue all afternoon as applause for victorious crews hoisting trophy after trophy on the podium merge with the rising surge of support for the next wave of racers nearing the line.

These are excellent signs of what to expect here in one year’s time when the 2024 World Rowing Senior, Under 23, and Under 19 Championships come to a little island in the small Port Dalhousie neighbourhood of St. Catharines, Canada. Even without the Olympic and Paralympic events—those rowers will be across the Atlantic Ocean at Paris 2024 instead, as usual in a Games year—thousands of international rowers converging here for a week in August 2024 will make it a “Mega Worlds” to remember.

Memories of 1999

More recently host of the 2010 World Rowing Masters Regatta and 2015 Pan American Games, St. Catharines’ Royal Canadian Henley racecourse has only hosted the Word Rowing Championships twice, in 1970 and 1999. Current World Rowing president Jean-Christophe Rolland, who (with Michel Andrieux) claimed silver for France that year in the Men’s Pair remembers the 1999 event well.

For Rolland and Andrieux, who went on to win Olympic gold in an unforgettable race the following year at Sydney 2000, their Canadian experience was crucial. “It was our comeback season after a year break,” recalls Rolland of the pair’s return to racing following a bronze medal at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics and World Rowing Championships gold the following year at Aiguebelette. “We had to rebuild our position within the French team and position ourselves as leaders internationally. Having missed the last World Cup in Lucerne, coming second behind Australia’s Drew Ginn and James Tomkins in St. Catharines was a great performance. That is where our Olympic gold was born.”

It takes a village…

One of Rolland’s chief memories of the regatta is how all athletes lived together in one location rather than separately at individual hotels. “The accommodation at Brock University nearby made it feel like an Olympic Village.”

It is an experience that local organisers are planning to repeat and improve on in 2024, says Organising Committee Co-chair, Bill Schenck. “It will be a village atmosphere, which athletes don’t get a lot of experience with for events like this.” Along with being only fifteen minutes from the course, the meals, Schenck adds, will be something for athletes to look forward to.

That sense of coming together through the sport of rowing is nothing new for locals, with businesses, various levels of government and over 500 volunteers rallying to support this latest world-class event. “The community has embraced the sport of rowing for over a century,” says Michelle Kerr, the event’s Hospitality Director.

While many of those volunteers will be young or new to helping at such a large scale regatta, “we will also have many volunteers returning that were part of the 1999 Worlds and some that may have even been part of the 1970 World Championships,” Kerr says. “We are fortunate to have so many long-time rowing volunteers in St. Catharines, many of whom have been supporting the sport for over 50 years.”

A right royal regatta site

To accommodate World Rowing’s 2024 event, the annual Royal Canadian Henley Regatta, will be held a week early than usual and two weeks prior to the World Championships, providing a unique opportunity for international crews seeking race experience on the course.

“There are the Championship events for rowers who have raced internationally in an Under19, Under23 or Senior event,” says Schenck of the Canadian Henley. For those who have not competed internationally before, “there is a chance for athletes to come, compete as their home club and then take part in their first World Championships two weeks later.”

Now in its 139^th edition, the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta transforms this quiet corner of the small Canadian city of St. Catharines each year into the destination for rowers across Canada and the United States. Located on the Sout-West shore of Lake Ontario, Martindale Pond is half an hour by car from Canada’s southern boarder and a little more than an hour from Toronto, the nation’s largest metropolis and airport, making Henley Island no stranger to international visitors.

Changes to the surrounding area since 1999 include a foot bridge near the finish line that gives spectators the opportunity to access a nearby park and follow the exciting finishing sprints almost at water level. This and other improvements to community infrastructure and businesses are part of what Kerr calls a “wonderful rejuvenation” to St. Catharine’s Port Dalhousie neighbourhood that means “even more for our athletes and participants to enjoy around the regatta venue.”  “There have been improvements every year to the course since 1999,” says Schenck. On Henley Island itself, the Neil Campbell Rowing Centre is a 1200 square metre training facility complete with rowing ergometers, strength training facilities and accessible washrooms.

Ready to welcome the world

As for the races on the days of our visit this year, the organisers and officials demonstrated their skill in handling a mid-morning break for weather and smoothly fitting in every trophy race with time to spare. The short-lived thunderstorm became a mere prelude to the deafening excitement of cheers as the finals kept coming: this race bow-to-bow, the next an easy victory, another yet an all-or-nothing come-from-behind dash for the coveted “Henley Gold”.

Long tradition holds—as it does in this regatta’s British namesake, the Henley Royal Regatta—that there are no silver or bronze medals. But this is not Henley-on-Thames, it is Henley Island on Martindale Pond, home to a week-long festival of rowing at the very heart of a nation’s and a continent’s rowing identity. In 2024 it will be home as well to the World Rowing Senior, Under 23 and Under 19 Championships: the local community are ready and eager to welcome the world once again.