Sailing and Rowing

Sailing

            Sailing first became an Olympic sport in the 1900 Games.  It entered again as a sport in 1908, and has continued since then.  Sailing was a co-ed sport until 1984, when there were women's events.  However, some events are still mixed.

          Olympic sailing competitions is held in two categories, fleet racing and match racing.  Fleet racing involves all competing boats racing against each other in one race, the top three boats win the medals.  There is a different event for each boat size and crew number.  The fleet events are the men's and women's board (Mistral) and double-handed dinghy (470). They also include the mixed competitions of multihull open (Tornado), single-handed dinghy open (Laser), high performance dinghy open (49er), the men's single-handed dinghy (Finn), and the women's single-handed dinghy (Europe) open.

      Match races involve two boats competing head-to-head.  The competition begins with six fleet-style races which determine the top 12 boats who advance to the elimination series. 

     Points are awarded to the places in each heat (first place gets less points than second place).  At the end of all one-on-one races, the three lowest scores win the medals.  The match event is the fleet/match race keelboat open (Yngling) mixed.

Rowing

          Rowing started in the Olympics in 1896. Women first competed in 1976.
          Rowing is an endurance test that finishes at a speed of up to 10-meters a second. Crews cover the middle 1000-meters at about 40 strokes per minute, but over the first and last 500-meters, shift up a gear to as many as 47.

      The modern master is Steve Redgrave of Great Britain, widely hailed as the greatest rower ever. A six-time World Champion, he won gold medals at the last five Olympic Games and has been loosely crowned Athlete of the Century.

            The two categories are sculling and sweep oar.  A rower has one oar in sweep rowing and switches sides according to where the boat wants to go, and two oars, one in each hand, in sculling.

      In both events,  there are heats to determine semi-finalists and finalists.  Non-qualifiers get a second chance, as in canoeing and kayaking, and the top racers qualify again for the next round. 

      Scull events are the men's and women's double sculls, light weight double sculls, quadruple sculls, and single sculls.  The sweep oar events are the men's and women's coxless pair and eight with coxswain, and the men's lightweight coxless four and coxless   four.

       Boats usually have about one, two, four, or eight rowers. The   eight rower crew has a cox, who steers the boat and directs the crew, but, in all of the boats, one rower steers by controlling a small rudder with a foot pedal.

For more information, visit:

http://olympic.org/uk/sports/programme/disciplines_uk.asp?DiscCode=SA

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