History Of Rowing At The Olympic Games

For the ultimate competitive environment, look no further than the Olympic Games. Often hailed as the pinnacle of athletic competition and a symbol of excellence worldwide, competitors have been pushing their physical limits in every event since its birth over 3000 years ago.

As an age-old sport with roots tracing back to Ancient Greece, there is one particularly intriguing event that has always graced some of history’s most renowned Olympiads: rowing. To understand why this ancient maritime tradition continues to make waves at modern-day Olympics events worldwide, let’s dive into its mythic yet extensive lineage starting from its humble beginnings on the inland river.

Evolution Of Rowing In The Olympics From 1896 To 2024

Since the inception of the modern Olympic Games in 1896, rowing has been a cornerstone of the competition. From the early days of single sculls and coxless pairs, the sport has expanded to include many events across both sexes, including the eight-oared shell and the double sculls. As technology has advanced and training techniques have evolved, so has the sport of rowing at the Olympics.

With the introduction of women’s rowing events in 1976 and the sport’s continued growth globally, the Olympic Games competition remains one of the most anticipated and fiercely contested events in all rowing. As we look ahead to the 2024 France Olympics, seeing what new challenges and innovations emerge for the athletes competing on the world stage will be exciting.

Here are the key stages in the evolution of Olympic events:

• In 1894, the idea to include nautical sports such as rowing, sailing, and swimming in the Olympics was expressed at the Paris Congress.
• Women: In 1972, the proposal to add women’s events to the Olympic program was approved at the 73rd IOC Session held in Munich.
• Lightweight: In 1993, the proposal to replace three events with three others for lightweights received approval at the IOC Executive Board meeting in Atlanta.

Evolution in the number of events: The number of events has changed over the years. The breakdown is as follows:

• 1900: 4 men’s events
• 1904: 5 Men’s Events
• 1908-1912: 4 men’s events
• 1920: 5 Men’s Events
• 1924-1972: 7 men’s events
• 1976-2016: 14 events (8 men’s and six women’s)

Here are some fascinating stories from Olympic rowing history:

• During the 1900 Games in Paris, Dutch rowers Roelof Klein and Francois Brandt replaced their coxswain with a 73-pound boy they found on the streets and won the gold medal. The boy disappeared before anyone found out his age, but a Dutch historian estimated he was between 12 and 14.
• American Jack Kelly won gold medals in the single and double sculls within 30 minutes at the 1920 Antwerp Games. His daughter Grace became an actress and Princess of Monaco, while his son John Kelly Jr. competed in rowing at four Olympic Games.
• Benjamin Spock, a member of the U.S. men’s eight teams that won gold at the 1924 Paris Games, became a famous paediatrician and author of “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” which sold over 45 million copies.
• American Paul Costello won gold in double sculls at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, becoming one of five rowers in Olympic history to win gold medals at three Games. The others are Jack Beresford, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Siegfried Brietzke, and Steve Redgrave.
• The U.S. men’s eight team won gold at the 1936 Berlin Games, defeating Germany on their home turf. Briton Jack Beresford won medals in five consecutive Olympics, including gold in the double sculls in 1936, making him one of the most successful rowers ever.
• Australian Mervyn Wood, dubbed “The Cary Grant of Scullers,” won the single sculls title at the 1948 London Games. He added silver to the event in 1952 and a double sculls bronze in 1956. In the late 1970s, while serving as police commissioner in the Australian state of New South Wales, he faced charges of perverting the course of justice.
• American John Kelly Jr., brother of Grace Kelly and son of Olympic rowing legend Jack Kelly, won bronze in the single sculls event at the 1956 Melbourne Games. He twice won the prestigious Henley Royal Regatta in England.
• The U.S. men’s eight teams, represented by various colleges, won the event at every game from 1920 to 1956 before finishing fifth in Rome in 1960, more than 10 seconds behind victorious Germany.
• During the 1900 Games in Paris, Dutch rowers Roelof Klein and Francois Brandt replaced their coxswain with a 73-pound boy they found on the streets and won the gold medal. The boy disappeared before anyone discovered his age, but a Dutch historian estimated he was between 12 and 14.
• American Jack Kelly won gold medals in the single and double sculls within 30 minutes at the 1920 Antwerp Games. His daughter Grace became an actress and Princess of Monaco, while his son John Kelly Jr. competed in rowing at four Olympic Games.
• Benjamin Spock, a member of the U.S. men’s eight teams that won gold at the 1924 Paris Games, became a famous paediatrician and author of “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care,” which sold over 45 million copies.
• American Paul Costello won gold in double sculls at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, becoming one of five rowers in Olympic history to win gold medals at three Games. The others are Jack Beresford, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Siegfried Brietzke, and Steve Redgrave.
• The U.S. men’s eight team won gold at the 1936 Berlin Games, defeating Germany on their home turf. Briton Jack Beresford won medals in five consecutive Olympics, including gold in the double sculls in 1936, making him one of the most successful rowers ever.
• Australian Mervyn Wood, dubbed “The Cary Grant of Scullers,” won the single sculls title at the 1948 London Games. He added silver to the event in 1952 and a double sculls bronze in 1956. In the late 1970s, while serving as police commissioner in the Australian state of New South Wales, he faced charges of perverting the course of justice.
• American John Kelly Jr., brother of Grace Kelly and son of Olympic rowing legend Jack Kelly, won bronze in the single sculls event at the 1956 Melbourne Games. He twice won the prestigious Henley Royal Regatta in England.
• The U.S. men’s eight teams, represented by various colleges, won the event at every game from 1920 to 1956 before finishing fifth in Rome in 1960, more than 10 seconds behind victorious Germany.
• The New Zealand Eight at Munich in 1972 had little funding, but they purchased a boat through bingo and a raffle. The engineers, carpenters, and mechanics emerged victorious despite facing rivals with much larger budgets. They made history as the first non-U.S., non-Great Britain, and non-German crew to win the event.
• East German boats claimed victory in seven of the eight men’s rowing events at the Moscow Games in 1980. However, Pertti Karppinen of Finland stood out with his powerful finish in the single sculls, winning gold for the second time in a streak that eventually spanned three consecutive Olympics.
• Steve Redgrave made his Olympic debut in rowing at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, helping Great Britain win the men’s four with coxswain. This introduced Redgrave to a long and fruitful Olympic career, where he continued to win gold medals until 2000, earning knighthood.
• The rowing events in Los Angeles saw a massive boycott of Eastern Bloc nations, which allowed the U.S. team to win eight medals across men’s and women’s competitions. Romania’s women captured five gold medals, while America’s only victory came in the eight. Bradley Lewis and Paul Enquist also won gold for the U.S. in the men’s double sculls, and Lewis would later reflect on the sport in his memoir.
• During the 1984 Games, a French rower lost his oar due to equipment tampering during the men’s eight repechage. The Canadian team capitalized on the upset, holding off the favoured Americans in the final race by just 0.42 seconds.
• Pertti Karppinen’s bid for his fourth consecutive single sculls gold medal ended in the semis at Seoul in 1988. Instead, East German Thomas Lange triumphed over five-time world champion West German Peter-Michael Kolbe in the final. Lange’s father, a Communist Party member, would later take his own life following the fallout of communism’s collapse in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Lange defended his Olympic title at the 1992 Games in Barcelona.
• Australia’s “Oarsome Foursome” lineup of Andrew Cooper, Michael McKay, Nicholas Green, and James Tomkins debuted at the Barcelona Games in 1992, taking the Olympic title in the men’s four after winning the World Championship in 1990. The team would repeat their gold medal win at the 1996 Atlanta Games, with Drew Ginn replacing Cooper in the lineup.
• Silken Laumann of Canada was the favourite to win the women’s single sculls at Barcelona, but a pre-Olympic collision with a German boat left her with severe injuries to her right leg. Despite being told she would need six months to recover, Laumann was determined to compete just five weeks later. Ultimately, she won bronze and added to Canada’s five rowing medals at the Games.
• Norway’s men’s quadruple sculls crew won the approval of the Barcelona crowd in 1992 by using a wooden boat and oars, which stood in contrast to their rivals’ lightweight carbon fibre equipment (including the victorious Germans). Norway finished second in the race, just two seconds behind their opponents.
• Xeno Mueller of Switzerland made an impressive comeback in the men’s single sculls event at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, passing Derek Porter of Canada and Thomas Lange of Germany, the two-time defending champion, in the last 500 meters. Mueller had a diverse upbringing, having lived in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and France before moving to the United States as a Brown University student in 1992. In 2004, he became a U.S. citizen.
• Despite saying he had had enough of rowing after his fourth gold medal won in 1996, Steve Redgrave of Great Britain returned to pursue a fifth gold in the men’s four at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. This cemented his status as one of the most remarkable Olympians in history, with five golds to his name.
• The men’s single sculls final at Sydney saw a close race between reigning champion Xeno Mueller of Switzerland and Rob Waddell of New Zealand, with Waddell ultimately claiming victory. Mueller tried to catch up in the third quarter, but Waddell responded with a surge that gave him open water and sealed the double world champion’s Olympic title win in 6 minutes and 48.90 seconds.
• The United States, which had dominated the prestigious men’s eight events in rowing, came in fifth at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, while Great Britain won the race for the first time since 1912.
• Belarus’ Yekaterina Karsten successfully defended her Olympic single sculls title at the Sydney Games in a photo finish, winning by .01 second over Bulgaria’s Rumyana Neykova. Karsten trailed Neykova at the 600-meter mark and was joined by Germany’s Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski later in the race, but she mounted a sprint in the final stretch and barely won.
• The United States ended a 40-year gold medal drought in the men’s eight events at the Athens Olympics in 2004, with significant changes made to the crew ahead of the Games. Jason Read, Wyatt Allen, Chris Ahrens, Joey Hansen, Matt Deakin, Dan Beery, Beau Hoopman, Bryan Volpenhein, and coxswain Peter Cipollone had never raced together at a significant international regatta before Athens.
• At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Kenyan rower Ibrahim Githaiga became the first black African to compete in the sport at the Games, despite finishing far behind the medal contenders in single sculls. Githaiga only took up rowing in 1997 at the suggestion of a friend and eventually earned an Olympic Solidarity scholarship that allowed him to train with the South African and Dutch national teams.
• Great Britain’s men’s coxless four boat won their country’s third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the event at the Beijing Games in 2008, while New Zealand’s women’s double sculls team defended their 2004 gold medal with a narrow .01 second win over Germany. Romania’s Georgeta Andrunache won her third consecutive gold medal in the women’s coxless pair and fifth overall. China’s women’s quadruple sculls boat brought home the host nation’s first Olympic gold in rowing. On the final day, the U.S. women’s eight team won their country’s first gold medal in the event since 1984.
• Xeno Mueller of Switzerland made an impressive comeback in the men’s single sculls event at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, passing Derek Porter of Canada and Thomas Lange of Germany, the two-time defending champion, in the last 500 meters. Mueller had a diverse upbringing, having lived in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and France before moving to the United States as a Brown University student in 1992. In 2004, he became a U.S. citizen.
• Despite saying he had had enough of rowing after his fourth gold medal won in 1996, Steve Redgrave of Great Britain returned to pursue a fifth gold in the men’s four at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. This cemented his status as one of the most remarkable Olympians in history, with five golds to his name.
• The men’s single sculls final at Sydney saw a close race between reigning champion Xeno Mueller of Switzerland and Rob Waddell of New Zealand, with Waddell ultimately claiming victory. Mueller tried to catch up in the third quarter, but Waddell responded with a surge that gave him open water and sealed the double world champion’s Olympic title win in 6 minutes and 48.90 seconds.
• The United States, which had dominated the prestigious men’s eight events in rowing, came in fifth at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, while Great Britain won the race for the first time since 1912.
• Belarus’ Yekaterina Karsten successfully defended her Olympic single sculls title at the Sydney Games in a photo finish, winning by .01 second over Bulgaria’s Rumyana Neykova. Karsten trailed Neykova at the 600-meter mark and was joined by Germany’s Katrin Rutschow-Stomporowski later in the race, but she mounted a sprint in the final stretch and barely won.
• The United States ended a 40-year gold medal drought in the men’s eight events at the Athens Olympics in 2004, with significant changes made to the crew ahead of the Games. Jason Read, Wyatt Allen, Chris Ahrens, Joey Hansen, Matt Deakin, Dan Beery, Beau Hoopman, Bryan Volpenhein, and coxswain Peter Cipollone had never raced together at a significant international regatta before Athens.
• At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Kenyan rower Ibrahim Githaiga became the first black African to compete in the sport at the Games, despite finishing far behind the medal contenders in single sculls. Githaiga only took up rowing in 1997 at the suggestion of a friend and eventually earned an Olympic Solidarity scholarship that allowed him to train with the South African and Dutch national teams.
• Great Britain’s men’s coxless four boat won their country’s third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the event at the Beijing Games in 2008, while New Zealand’s women’s double sculls team defended their 2004 gold medal with a narrow .01 second win over Germany. Romania’s Georgeta Andrunache won her third consecutive gold medal in the women’s coxless pair and fifth overall. China’s women’s quadruple sculls boat brought home the host nation’s first Olympic gold in rowing. On the final day, the U.S. women’s eight team won their country’s first gold medal in the event since 1984.