Where has the innovation gone?

All manufacturers claim to be at the forefront of technology. Giving the athletes the best equipment that can be produced, at a premium due to all of the hard work and research put into its development. But much has really changed in the past decade? Throughout the late 20th and early 21st century there were numerous changes to boats and blades, making the sport almost unrecognisable. Macon blades being replaced by the cleaver, carbon fibre everywhere, and the wing rigger surpassing three stays all spring to mind as innovations from before the past decade or so. Even the failed innovations have dried up, the mid-coxed 4+, sliding riggers, asynchronous rowing and bow-loaded eights are some examples of outside the box thinking, yet nothing of the like has been since. Why is this the case, surely the capacity of human innovation has not been reached in the sport?

One of the key factors in the lack of large advances in the sport is undoubtably the restrictions that are placed on equipment by governing bodies and alike. Sliding riggers and bow-loaded eights fell to fairness and safety concerns respectively. Now if you were sat coxing an eight from the bows at full pace and ended up in bank you’d appreciate the safety concerns of FISA. Yet if you had developed a sliding rigger system, or set of blades, or even a new fin that would give you a considerable edge, should that be applauded and allowed as ingenious or banned because no one else has managed the same? Are the restrictions on equipment now too strict to bother innovating and spending money on R&D when you could redirect this money to places where marginal gains will be easier to come by, and let the manufactures deal with making quicker shells and the restrictions that surround that task.  

Whenever a new shell is released, it is claimed the new shape, balance and weighting of it will put you ahead of the competition. That the carbon wing will save you a few grams over the aluminium, and that the stiffness of a rear wing will provide the extra inch you may need to win whatever race you enter. Whilst there is evidence that these advances are giving the extra tenth of a percent in these specific conditions with that exact rower, would chasing the tenth of a percent count as innovation or progression? I would argue probably the latter. All of the top of the range brands are struggling to offer more speed and appeal to the clubs as speed is often also inherently instability. Elite athletes have thousands of Ks to row and hone their skills for a specific shell, the clubs athletes do not. It is hard to innovate and create when trying to strike the perfect balance for these athletes, so the innovation may have to come from the athletes themselves. 

Sports science has come a long way since the turn of the century. However in the last two decades, has the physiology or training plan of a rower changed drastically. What effect has all of the science changed about how athletes train or even live their lives. Concept2 were writing about UT1 and UT2 training zones in the 1990s and this has been a key aspect in how rowers train, and the basic rowing stroke profile has remained constant for decades. It can definitely be argued that what some coaches have been doing may be innovative and breeding success for the club or by leading athletes to outperform their targets, when clubs are so secretive of their training plans and technical work it must slip under the radar. 

In a sport that is won by the narrowest of margins, with each and every inch of the course fiercely competed over, it may come as a shock when there has been minimal big picture changes to how things are done. Yet if you look at the big picture, can it be argued that we have pushed the shapes, design, and materials to the edge of what is possible and are waiting on technology to give us another stepping stone to the next phase of rowing. In the extensive history of the sport, has everything been tried to make boats go as fast as physics will allow. Or, are we so invested in searching for the extra tenth of a percent here and the hundredth of a percent there, have we stopped looking for the five percent and 10 percent changes that would really mean innovation as there is so much more to lose if the risk doesn’t pay off?  

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Harry Perry

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