Rowing Story’s actually quite simple to navigate because almost everything here falls into one of three categories:

• Year-by-year accounts of who rowed each year from 1951, their journey to the Championships (or Olympic games) and what happened when they got there.
• Personal biographies of some of of the women who’ve represented GB since 1952.
• Blogs about general aspects of rowing in Britain in the second half of the 20th century, mostly but not all to do with women’s rowing.

If you’re feeling like a kid in a sweet shop (and I hope you are), here are some suggestions for getting started:

• Women’s rowing at the Olympic games only started in 1976. Find out all about the coxed four and pair who raced in Montreal that year here >>
• Penny Chuter was an extremely influential figure in British rowing, winning our first women’s international single sculls medal in 1962, becoming the first woman coach employed by the ARA (now called British Rowing), and coaching GB men’s crews to international medals too.
• Dorothea Newman was inspired to take up rowing by watching the Olympic regatta in Henley in 1948 when the Olympics were in London. Yes, really!
• In the early 1960s, Britain realised it was no longer the successful rowing nation it had once been, especially in the face of Eastern bloc domination. People started thoroughly agitated about the fact that it was really hard to compete on the world stage when we didn’t have a 2k, multi-lane course on which to practice. It took over ten years before Holme Pierrepont was finally built. Read the saga >>

New stuff gets added here all the time so…

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