2010 WUC Rowing Update: Day 1 of Competitions

SZEGED – Today, August 13^th, the Heats started with cloudy weather, shy sunshine, and some wind, but perfect weather for the rowers. The competitions include totally 13 races for both men & women, 98 officials.

The racing course is according the FISA standard. The course is a 7 lanes course and 13.5 m wide. The Albano system is according to the FISU/FISA requirements.

There are 150 boats (49 women’s boats and 93 men’s boats) with 350 athletes (251 men and 99 women);

Regarding the development of rowing amongst university athletes, the IOC recently identified that youth was an essential target group which had not been actively addressed within the Olympic movement and needed to be targeted as part of their overall strategy.

Youth therefore represents the future of Rowing and young rowers can be broadly classified as “academic” rowers.

According to FISU Technical Chair for Rowing Lionel Girard, “the general organization is excellent and the organizers are always ready to find a solution for any issue, except maybe for the internet problems arising here.”

The technical meeting confirms that there is no complaint at all for this first day of races.

It is interesting to note that there will be no straight finals. The country who seems to better placed is Italy.  Poland, normally placed 1^st in the final ranking seems to be less performing as well as Great Britain.

Many nations qualified for the finals. The supremacy in the number of qualified athletes is Italy, which actually, in the total program of rowing this year is surpassing itself, and now even at university level.

Switzerland, who had made excellent results in Belgrade at the last edition, is not presenting a strong team as expected, as it gained only one heat today.

The Organising host country, Hungary, qualifies at least one boat for sure for the final.

“Opportunities remain open as further to the 3 repechages for races, some boats will qualify for the semi-finals” says Lionel Girard.

We are globally satisfied for the running of this event and this confirms that we have a strong University level at this FISU event, between the level of the World Championship less for U23 and the championship for the seniors, which qualifies the WUC in the rowing program in general.”

The detailed results can be found at the OC website at www.wucrowing2010.hu.

(Source: Nicole Mangelschots, FISU Asst. WUC)