Keeping up with Rowing from Home: Resources from Craftsbury Sculling Coaches

A handful of our recommended reads.

With most spring rowing events cancelled (no Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race, no NCAA or IRA racing, no World Rowing Cups) and major summer events in question (the Henley Royal Regatta, the Olympic Games), several Craftsbury sculling coaches have some ideas for staying involved with the sport from the safety and isolation of your home. Here are several recommendations for videos, documentaries, books, and more for you to check out.

We’re appreciating Row2k’s coverage now more than ever, as they’ve been on top of updating and contextualizing the latest developments in the sport, compiling news, and continuing to publish features on a variety of topics to keep our mind off things. 

WorldRowing.com, the official FISA website, has the latest statements and updates regarding the international competitive season. We also enjoyed this feature they posted recently, which profiled our training partner Franck N’Dri and included a Craftsbury mention. USRowing is your source for domestic updates.

If you’re missing watching some great racing, there’s plenty of content online. WorldRowing has an archive of international races, and Henley has unmatched coverage available on its YouTube channel.  Many Olympic finals can also be found on YouTube, including the 2004 Women’s Single Sculls final from Athens. If you’ve attended a Craftsbury camp, chances are you’ve seen it – it’s a perennial favorite among many of our coaches.

As for rowing technique on YouTube, from Ric Ricci: “There is an immense amount of content available on YouTube. That fact presents a real dilemma for the student of sculling. Deciding what is credible is the challenge and contradictions abound! More is not better and what is best depends on who you ask.” That being said, he recommends this video of Thomas Lange, as does Steve Whelpley. Will Forteith shared one of his favorite technique videos as well: a 2014 Craftsbury GRP 4x rowing top quarter.

For some longer-form viewing to watch from the couch or during a steady state session, there are several rowing documentaries available online. Noel Wanner writes, “My favorite all-time video about elite racing is available on YouTube: Gold Fever, a documentary about the British men's 4- in their preparation for the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. The rowers, including the legendary Steve Redgrave, share very honest insights into their training, their mental and emotional challenges, the pressures of selection, injury, etc. The widely different personalities of the athletes are on display: strong wills and clashing personalities emerge, highlighting the extreme challenge of coalescing into a championship crew. Plus it's about 2 and 1/2 hours long, so it's a great thing to watch while farming watts on an erg or a bike trainer!” 

Other titles include The Boys of ’36, a PBS special featuring the story of The Boys in the Boat (the book, of course, is also recommended). We often show our junior campers A Hero for Daisy, about the 1976 Title IX protest by the women’s crew at Yale. SXULLS is a project out of Germany which is currently following the Olympic selection process for their men’s sculling boats; you can follow along on Instagram @sxulls2020, or via their website / YouTube channel. For some more fictional fare (though based on a true story), you can check out Miracle at Oxford, based on a true story and Daniel Topolski’s book True Blue about the Oxford Boat Race Mutiny.

More recommended rowing reads include Assault on Lake Casitas, Brad Alan Lewis’ account of his path to the 1984 Olympics. The Amateurs by David Halberstam offers a parallel story of the 1984 Olympic selection process. Daniel J. Boyne’s The Red Rose Crew tells the story of some of the earliest US women to compete internationally. If you’re tired of elite rowing, Barry Strauss’ Rowing Against the Current details his descent into the sport at age forty.

On the technical side, Kevin MacDermott writes that “both editions of Rowing Faster, edited by Volker Nolte, are essential reference books for rowing coaches and athletes.  I return to them often and always find useful information and inspiration.” Troy recommends Frank Cunningham’s The Sculler at Ease - “The one-page introduction surprises me every time I read it – you won’t get any closer to enlightenment outside the boat than by sitting with the ideas he presents.” Other frequently referenced tomes include Valery Kleshnev’s The Biomechanics of Rowing and Mike Davenport’s The Nuts & Bolts Guide to Rigging. 

We’re also very much looking forward to the upcoming documentary A Most Beautiful Thing, which chronicles the first African American high school rowing team in the country.

Whew! We hope this content will help keep you entertained and excited to be back on the water with us in Craftsbury, when that is once again possible. 

Thanks to Kevin MacDermott, Ric Ricci, Noel Wanner, Erika Sloan, Will Forteith, Steve Whelpley, Carol Bower, and Troy Howell for contributing.