Indoor Rowing

For the first time in the history of rowing in Sri Lanka, an Indoor Rowing Competition was held last week, 1st (Saturday) and 2nd (Sunday) of May 2010 at Ranmal Holiday Resort, Panadura.

In European countries, during the off season (usually in the winter), as they can't do boat training in the outdoors, they have invented a machine called Ergo Meter. It is actually a simulator and simulates the rowing activity(complete rowing cycle).

To preserve the competitiveness of athletes, they organize "Indoor Rowing championships" in every year in which athletes have to row in the ergometers.

Nowadays ergometer is considered as a very important device for rowing, In Sri Lanka there are some institution who has these devices. So the Kothelawala Deffence University and the Bolgoda Lake Rowing Club took the initiative in conducting such an Indoor Rowing Championship in Sri Lanka.

As this is a very much new experience to the Rowing community, almost every institutions involved in rowing took part in this inaugural event. The rowing team of Sri Lanka army exposed them selves after a long time in this competition.

The whole competition was conducted based on age categories:

• 13 years and below
• 14 – 16 years
• 17 – 20 years
• 21 – 25 years
• 26 – 31 years
• 32 – 38 years
• Over 39 years (Masters)
• Elite Category.

And there was a special event called Bolgoda Endurance Challenge event which was an open.

All these categories pertained for both men and women. Only the under 13 event was rowed for 1000m. all others were 2000m. And for each category there were individual events (each athlete has to row 2000m) and team events (where each team consists of 4 members and each one has to row 500m x 4).

At the end of the day kothelawala diffence university bagged most of the trophies in the age categories over 20 and they were even threatening Sri Lanka Navy and Sri Lanka Air Force. Royal College and St. Thomas College were doing well in school categories while prince of wales college, Moratuwa also got some medals.

In women's categories It was again Kotelawala deffence university got many of the trophies in age categories over 20. Meauseus College, St. Bishop's College and Ladies College were among the winners of the school category events.

As this competition is to be organized annually, we can expect more and more competition in the upcoming years, and also because of the rapid growth of the sport in the country, we can expect more and more institutions will become aware of the sport and will coming in to play in upcoming regattas.