Fifty years of women on the World Rowing stage

The past 50 years have been transformative for women’s rowing. The sport has developed from not even giving women a chance to race for a world title, to parity in terms of boat classes and athlete numbers at the Olympic Games, all in five decades.

At the heart of much of that change, particularly from the 1970s through to the early 2000s, was Great Britain’s Penny Chuter. Chuter was appointed as one of the British national coaches in 1973, and led the British squad to the first-ever women’s World Rowing Championships the following year.

Back in 1974, the concept of women racing at the world level was new, although women’s European Rowing Championships were well-established, and were still open to nations from the whole world. Women still raced over 1000m and their inaugural World Rowing Championships were held a week before the men’s, although on the same course – Lucerne.

The women would race in six events: single sculls, pair, double sculls, coxed four, coxed quadruple sculls, and the eight. Entries came from across the world, and in good numbers, notably with 16 entries in the coxed quad. East Germany topped the medal table with four gold medals.

Chuter says there was reluctance to run coxless events for the women, and indeed it was not until 1989 that the women’s four lost its cox. However, she says there was a buzz about the first Women’s World Rowing Championships.

“There was a much greater attendance, it was fantastic because it was in Lucerne. It was going to be fair, it’s a fantastic course, we had the freedom of Lucerne, they had free passes for going up all these mountains. It was a fantastic atmosphere – but it wasn’t mixed,” she remembers.

Chuter thinks the biggest sea-change for women’s rowing in the 50 years since Lucerne 1974 was the introduction of women’s rowing to the Olympic Games. That came just two years later, in 1976, when the women raced the same six events as in Lucerne and still over 1000m. That, says Chuter, was when the significance of women being able to compete on the same stage as men really hit her.

During the 1980s, Chuter continued to be a big part of pushing for equality in the sport as a member of World Rowing’s women’s and competition commissions, including the introduction of lightweight women’s rowing at the 1984 World Rowing Championships in Canada.

But she says the establishment of the World Rowing Cup in the late 1980s and then the global development programme, have had a major impact on the progression of women’s rowing.

“As soon as we started talking about the World Cup, we started talking about everybody. In the early days men stood to lose, same as in Great Britain in the early days. Anything the women got it usually meant the men lost so there was lots of resistance on the men’s side,” Chuter adds.

She worked closely over the years with Norwegian Thor Nilsen on the development programme, which was aimed at increasing the number of nations competing in the sport. Chuter and Nilsen started running camps for women from developing nations in 1999; these were later expanded to male rowers from developing nations too.

The other milestone to mark was the move to 2000m racing for all, which finally took place in 1985.

“That made such a terrific difference. It changed the physique of the athletes overnight,” Chuter says.

The long impact of the introduction of the women’s World Rowing Championship continues to have its ripple effect.

“Women’s rowing came of age fully with the 21st century,” Chuter continues, pointing to the competition at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

But the ripple flows further down than international elite events. Chuter still goes to Henley Royal Regatta each year – after, of course, pushing earlier Stewards to introduce women’s events – and she is impressed by the quality on show now.

“I can remember the first years when Henley Royal started the women’s events proper. A lot of them weren’t very good, although they did their absolute best to get the best women they could, but now you look at the quality of the intermediate class women and they’re really good,” she says.

Overall, Chuter thinks the next stage of progression in rowing should be focused not on gender but on participation worldwide.

“I don’t think there’s any further to go. All the boat classes are matched. Getting back to exactly the same as the men is really great,” she says. “But we still need to push for more participating nations in the men and the women.”