Opportunities and limits to rowing faster

Olympic years are a prime opportunity for World Best Times to be set. This is when athletes aim to be at peak form in the four-year Olympic cycle and when competition is at its toughest. Add good weather conditions in the mix and athletes are likely to make an Olympic year a bumper speed year.

Dr Valery Kleshnev, a rowing scientist and the founder of Biorow Ltd. (www.biorow.com, www.biorow.org ), has carried out extensive analysis of race times recorded at international events, researching past trends in boat speed and estimating probable future boat speeds. After each Olympic Games Kleshnev analyses boat speeds and predicts the speed at which boats will be racing four years later at the next Olympic Rowing Regatta.

This year, six of the seven new World Best Times were set on the same day, during the heats of the Samsung World Rowing Cup II in Lucerne, Switzerland. The first was in the men’s four with Great Britain’s top four sweep rowers in the boat. The new time of 5:37.86 was four seconds faster than the previous time set ten years prior. This leap, according to Kleshnev, means that the World Best Time will not be broken again in this boat class until 2029.

In the men’s quadruple sculls a new World Best Time was set by Russia who beat the previous Best Time set only one race earlier by Croatia. The new time of reference in this boat class is 5:33.15. The women’s quadruple sculls’ World Best Time was broken by Germany when they went nearly one and a half seconds faster than the former time which was set 16 years ago.

The general growth in speed analysed by Kleshnev in the men’s quadruple sculls is of 1.84 per cent per year. Kleshnev works out this growth by using the best time recorded in each year in each event – the Best Time of the Year (BTY). He has used the past 20 years of times and from this has made a prediction on when the World Best Time will next be broken. For the men’s quad it means 2019 will be the year. In the women’s quadruple sculls, speed is increasing at a slower rate, pushing a possible new World Best Time result even further down the line to 2024.

The women’s eight World Best Time was broken by the United States. The USA already held the fastest time which they had set in 2006. The new time was nearly one and a half seconds faster at 5:54.17. The men’s eight also set a new World Best Time with Canada racing to 5:19.35, breaking the United States’ 2004 World Best Time.

Kleshnev has seen a growth of speed in both the men’s and women’s eights of more than 1.5 per cent per year using the BTY and thus within the next four or five years he predicts that these World Best Times will fall again.

The only new Best Time in a lightweight event was recorded in the lightweight women’s double sculls. New Zealand broke a previous time that had stood for six years by less than half a second and thus set the new time at 6:49.43. Kleshnev sees the recent trend in lightweight boat speeds as showing more growth than in open weight small boats. He has measured a trend of between one and two per cent per year increased boat speed in lightweight categories compared to around 0.2 per cent in the men’s and women’s single sculls and in the women’s pair.

Kleshnev explains: “The average dimensions of population in most rowing countries is closer to the lightweight category. The percentage of men bigger than 1.90m/90kg and women bigger than 1.80m/78kg is not very significant, so the number of big talented rowers is proportionally lower. Now we see the same countries winning in both the lightweight and the open categories while nations with a less developed rowing culture are uncompetitive in both.”

Kleshnev predicts that the three Olympic lightweight events are likely to see new World Best Times by the next Olympic Games in 2016.

In 2012, only one senior World Best Time was not set in Lucerne. At the London Olympic Games New Zealand set a new World Best Time in the men’s pair. The new time of 6:08.50 was nearly six seconds faster than the time set ten years prior. Kleshnev sees this as a result of the intense rivalry that developed between New Zealand and Great Britain in the pair over the last three years.

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“It placed the standards five to six seconds higher in this event,” says Kleshnev who predicts this time will not be broken again until 2024. The new World Best Time in the men’s pair was set during the Olympic Games heats and, remarkably, they were not under any major pressure coming into the finish. They were also the only boat to set a new Best Time that day.

With World Best Times continuing to be reset Kleshnev reflects on the limit to potential gains in speed. “We can speculate about limits in sports with one dominating physical quality: speed in sprinting, endurance in distance running, strength in weightlifting, coordination in gymnastics. However, rowing is a very complex sport. All above qualities are required in rowing, plus we need coordination in crews, plus we are a very technical sport with quite sophisticated equipment. Therefore, the area to improve in rowing is much wider and we can grow simply with a better combination of the qualities to match the specifics of the athlete. For example, of the winners of the 2012 Olympics we saw both very big athletes (men’s single sculls) and quite small athletes (men’s double sculls), so they need to choose quite different combinations of the stroke length, rate and applied force.”

In terms of the factors that are making boats go faster Kleshnev sees a number of aspects. “The main factor is the toughness of competition and we see it is increasing. The best rowing nations are getting better and better at adopting the most efficient methods of talent ID, assembling talents and training them to the highest level. The use of sport science, optimal management and funding are very important here.”

“Also, rowing equipment may be improved and better fitted to a rower’s characteristics. For example we are working on some revolutionary equipment developments, which may significantly increase boat speed.”

It must be noted that a unique aspect of rowing is that the sport establishes “World Best Times” not “World Records”. This is because weather and water conditions can impact greatly on performance and it is consequently very difficult to create an absolute level playing field between races and the resulting times. Von Werner Kollmann calculated the ideal (tail) wind speed is three toseven metres per second with water temperatures being from 19 to 20°C or higher. (Rudersport, October 2006).

In terms of Olympic Best Times and Adaptive Best Times being set this year, these are less relevant to trend research. The Olympics are staged only every four years, so the opportunity to set an Olympic Best Time is more limited. Thus usually Olympic Best Times are slower than World Best Times. As adaptive rowing has been raced internationally for only ten years and a number of boat and classification changes have occurred during this time, the data pool to show trends in adaptive rowing is relatively restricted.

The research by Kleshnev is invaluable to coaches as it helps establish prognostic times used by a number of countries when predicting the gold medal standard at the next World Rowing Championships or Olympic Rowing Regatta and thus allows them to establish racing targets.

Melissa S. Bray