Beryl Mitchell won GB women's first World medal | Women rowed at Henley | Sue Brown coxed the Boat Race - 1981 was a big year for women's rowing in the UK!
New! 1980 Moscow Olympics
In 1980, GB women reached their first Olympic finals, and both the eight and single sculler Beryl Mitchell came fifth.
New pages! 1979 report plus Gill Parker’s biography
With a new coach, Dan Topolski, and many more crews, 1979 was the start of a new era for the GB women's rowing team, one of whom was Gill Webb…
Rowing at the coalface
In 1977 three crews from the GB rowing team got an break from their pre-World Championships training camp by going down a mine in Nottingham.
New page! 1978 – when the Worlds first went down under
A full report on the many challenges GB women's rowing faced in 1978 has just been added to RowingStory.com. Read all about it!
Still racing, 57 years later
Over 50 years after they represented their countries at the Women's European Rowing Championships in the 1960s, two women were racing hard in single sculls at the World Rowing Masters Championships at Bled in 2017.
Thames skiffing: both decades ahead and behind rowing
Although it's a highly niche form of rowing, frozen in time from the late 19th century, Thames skiff racing Champions include a remarkably large number of GB women rowing internationals.
‘Amateur’ status and its implications
For nearly 100 years the ARA was obsessed with preventing anyone whom it didn't see as an amateur, not just from racing, but at times even from belong to a rowing club - with many daft and unintended consequences.
New page! 1977 and the GB women’s first Worlds final
A full report on 1977 has just been added to RowingStory.com. Read all about it!
When Britain lacked a 2k rowing course
Although British rowing realised as early as 1956 that we really needed a 2k multilane course, it took until 1972 before Holme Pierrepont was opened.
Rowing Story 