The 2022 World Rowing Virtual Indoor Sprints by the numbers

The 7th edition of the World Rowing Virtual Indoor Sprints took place between 9-13 March 2022, where more than 3000 competitors from around the world sprinted 1000m on a Concept2 indoor rowing machine.

The World Rowing Virtual Indoor Sprints, in partnership with Concept2 since 2016, is a free event and very much the original race for virtual indoor rowing. At the time, it marked a major push by World Rowing to promote and encourage indoor rowing, and its accessibility was ground breaking, allowing rowers to put in a best effort and submit their times for a few days worldwide across all types of Concept2 rowing machines, catering to all athletes with its large array of age and adaptive categories. 

The legacy is clear to see, with the sport of indoor rowing becoming a major sport in its own right, and also paved the way for many other online competitions, which grew further in response to the pandemic, including the recent 2021 and 2022 World Indoor Rowing Championships taking place online.

This year, the United States provided the top five fastest times of the competition for the men, with the fastest overall time achieved by Zach Fowle, 34, with a 2:51.1, narrowly squeezing out Brett Swindle and Kyle Larson by 0.2 and 0.3 seconds respectively.

For the lightweight men, Julian Alejandro Ortiz Rojas, 35, from Columbia took the honours, with a time of 2:59.4, and was the only lightweight dipping under the three-minute mark, followed by Asad Iqbal from Pakistan and Carlos Reategui from the USA. 

Viv Culverwell, 36, from Australia dominated the women’s field, winning with the fastest time of 3:14.2, six seconds clear from Jordan Falcone and Julie Goss, both from the USA. The fastest lightweight woman was Sarita Kristina Hansen, 33, from the Faroe Islands, similarly winning with a near six-second margin with a time of 3:30.3 over USA’s Michelle Evans and Eve Sankovski from Estonia. 

In the adaptive categories, Milan Lackovic, 47, from Slovakia and Kathleen Tarr, 53, from the USA, took top honours in the men’s and women’s PR3, respectively. USA’s Zoilo-Adalia, 17, and Fiona Swinford, 18, were the men’s and women’s PR3-II winners. Peter Brown, 40, from Australia and Angela Panek, 57, from the USA were top in the men’s and women’s PR2 category, with Tristin,41, from Australia and Emilienne Taraunu, 19, from French Polynesia providing the fastest time in the men’s and women’s PR1 category respectively. 

Lots of junior rowers also participated, with notable performances from Hammachi Elyn in the girl’s Junior 12 from France winning by nearly 30 seconds with a time of 3:29.7, and 17-year-old Ben Pollock’s Junior 18’s winning time of 3:06.9 placing him in the top 60 of the overall fastest time. 

In total, 3402 competitors from 69 nations took part, ages ranging from 3 to 86; a testament to the inclusive nature of indoor rowing.

The total number of entries settled back to pre-pandemic levels, compared to entries made during the height of many countries’ national lockdowns, when virtual entries were even higher, with 5270 entries last year.

Reflecting on the competition, Alex Dunne from Concept2 says ‘Technology and racing have changed over the last two years, and there have been more options for virtual participation. I think we are back to a base level of participation, and we can build on that for next year.’