World Rowing Coastal Championships and Beach Sprint Finals

In World Rowing competition, two formats of coastal rowing competition take place:

At the World Rowing Coastal Championships, the endurance format is raced. This format sees crews racing in 4 to 6 kilometre races around multiple turning points. It is a challenge of both endurance, skill, navigation, and adaptability to the changing conditions of a longer distance. This is a club based event.
At the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals, the beach spring format is raced. Beach Sprint is a head-to-head elimination style of racing, with a short sprint along the beach, a 250m row, and a 180-degree turn before rowing back to the beach and sprinting to the finish line. Competitions are structured such that athletes who progress further are required to race multiple times within a short time window. This discipline of rowing tests your power and strength, as well as coastal navigation skills and performance under fatigue.

There are currently three boat types, solo (1x), double scull (2x) and coxed quad scull (4X+).

There are seven boat classes for men and women: the solo, the double sculls, the mixed double sculls and the mixed coxed quadruple sculls.

Beach Sprints is a relatively new event, the first edition of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals taking place at Shenzhen, China in 2019. The event takes place in a beach setting with head-to-head racing taking place in solos, mixed doubles and mixed coxed quads. Raced in coastal boats, it begins with a Le Mans beach start and goes in a sprint out to a buoy and back. The race ends with one rower from each team sprinting to a finish line on the beach. Initially this was also a club event but after the introduction of this discipline at the 2028 Olympic Games, it has evolved in 2024 to one entry per nation. It now has World Championship status.

Index to this Section

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, errors may exist. Please send advice of any errors or inaccuracies by email to:

Also your comments, suggestions and photos are sought to enhance this site.

The idea for this history originated from the Olympic Rowing and World Senior Rowing Championship histories written by Andrew Guerin and Margot Foster in 1991, 1992 & 1993 for the Australian team handbooks. Andrew Guerin developed and extended these histories to the current format in 2004 for publication in 2004 and then expanded the site.

Steve Roll has been an invaluable contributor to the website in locating errors and finding Christian names of rowers. His superb work is acknowledged.

© Andrew Guerin – 2004
These contents of this history are copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted by the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. However given that the purpose of the history is to assist rowers and rowing clubs, written permission is not required for non-commercial usage by rowers and rowing clubs provided acknowledgement is made.

Disclaimer: Whilst extensive efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied, the editors take no responsibility for any loss or damage whatsoever arising from inaccuracies contained in this work.