For some time now, your boat has been cutting through mirror-like water. You shift your gaze to the stern to see it has little or no check and a beautiful, straight wake of bubbles and eddies stretches out into the middle distance. To each side, you see the swirls of the puddles framing the course you have steered over the last few minutes. Behind them in the distance lies the receding scenery that seemed so close when you began. To see what lies ahead of you requires a little extra effort: a twist of the body, a quick glance over your shoulder. Rowers -this almost goes without saying - spend most of their time looking backwards. And at the end of an Olympiad, there’s no better time to look back at what’s been an eventful quadrennial for the sport of rowing. What follows is a reflection on rowing between 2012 and 2016 in an attempt to understand what might happen in the next four years. Looking backwards whilst we go forwards. It’s something rowers are very good at.
Some things, like the British and German dominance in the men’s eight, the Kiwis’ excellence in the small boats and Tom Tehar working at the helm of the fastest women’s eight in the world, never seem to change. Others - the sensational TV coverage from Henley Regatta, the status of lightweight rowing in the Olympics and the health of rowing in Russia, seem to prefigure a different future for the sport. It’s clear that the four years up to the Games in Tokyo will see some of the most significant changes in the sport of rowing in the past twenty years.