A recent exchange on Twitter revealed that a well-informed woman who is currently a member of the senior squad of one of GB Rowing’s high-performance clubs had no idea who won GB’s first women’s World Rowing Championships medal, or when this had been (and her guess was 10 years too late).
Ensuring that we all know this kind of thing is exactly why this website exists, of course. So here’s a list of GB women’s rowing ‘firsts’ from the first GB medal at an international Championships to the first time a full openweight team has been sent to a (non-Olympic year) World Championships. Many are surprisingly recent, and there are also several quite significant ones yet to be achieved.
Knowing our history, whether rowing or more general, is about so much more than facts; it sheds light on why things are as they are today, and the journey that other went through to get here. This is particularly invaluable when considering the drawbacks and challenges facing the current system.
Rowing Story 