Triumph for staging and racing at the first ever virtual 2021 World Rowing Indoor Championships

When the pandemic forced the 2021 World Rowing Indoor Championships to go virtual it meant a new way of racing globally had to be created. Starting with continental qualifying rounds that began last December and including open pathways for anyone in the world to participate, the finalists were determined for the World Rowing Indoor Championships presented by Concept2 and supported by partner Tencent Cloud Services that took place from 23-27 February 2021.

The finalists then raced live from their bedrooms, balconies, bathrooms, kitchens and gyms on Concept2 indoor rowing machines. From the first day of racing world records began to fall across the categories which included a variety of distances and age groups as well as para rowing and team events.

The open men’s 2000m was one of the highlight events and the race saw last year’s under-23 indoor champion Ward Lemmelijn of Belgium come out on top. Lemmelijn fell just short of the magic sub 5:40 mark when he finished in a time of 5:42.2 ahead of Poland’s Bartosz Zablocki with Chirill Visit Chi-Sestakov of Moldova in third.

For the open women’s 2000m Sophie Souwer of the Netherlands had a blistering start over Kirsten Kline of the United States. Earlier in the week Kline had won the masters women’s 30-39-year-old category. In the last 250 metres of the race Kline challenged Souwer’s lead and, in an epic sprint to the line, Kline overtook Souwer just before the finish to clock the win in a time of 6:45.8. Souwer held on to second with Canada’s Marilou Duvernay-Tardif coming in third.

Finishing with the most medals was Finland’s indoor rowing hero Joel Naukkarinen. The Finn took away two golds, a silver and a bronze. The two golds came in the men’s and mixed 3-minute team events. For both team events the Egyptian National Team came in second with the UK Armed Forces third in the men’s event and Concept2 Fitness finishing third in the mixed team.

Naukkarinen’s silver medal came in the 1-hour category when he recorded a distance of 18,015 metres. This was just behind Germany’s Benjamin Reuter who finished with 18,270 metres. Tom Solesbury of Great Britain was third with 17,845 metres.

The bronze medal for Naukkarinen came in the open men’s 500 metre category. This race was won by the current world record holder Phil Clapp of Great Britain. Clapp scored a time of 1:11.6 with Anton Bondarenko of Ukraine just behind in 1:12.8. Naukkarinen’s third place was in a time of 1:14.1.

Val Coleman won the hearts of the global audience when she set a new world record in the masters women’s 90-94-year-old 2000 metre category. Great Britain’s Coleman, 91, broke her own record by finishing in a time of 13:05.0.

The on-water World Champion in the PR1 women’s single sculls Birgit Skarstein of Norway raced in the PR1 women’s 2000m category against number two in the world Moran Samuel of Israel. The tight race saw Skarstein hold off a late surge by Samuel to finish in a new world record time of 8:18.5. Sylvia Pille-Steppat of Germany finished third.

Nearly 1000 racing spots were filled by athletes from 63 nations took part in these championships. The live racing meant that the rowers had to fit in with a variety of time zones. Racing started each day at 12 noon CET (which was midnight in New Zealand and 3am in California) and was streamed live on www.worldrowing.com. Each rower was videoed racing from wherever they were in the world. These individual races were then linked through a virtual studio with commentators calling the races from Sarah Cook in Australia to Shane Farmer in California. Each athlete was connected to a screen where they could see how they were doing against their competitors. This timing and results software was produced and operated by race management company Time Team of the Netherlands. World Rowing Productions of Munich, Germany brought all of the elements together to create the live stream broadcast.

Rewatch the racing here.
Complete results here.