Late last year Rowing Australia set up the Masters Rowing Commission, chaired by John Whiting of Victoria. The ACT representative on the Commission is Susan Linacre. The purpose and make up of the Commission is set out on the. RA website here. This page also gives the minutes of the teleconferences held monthly by the Commission.
If you have a view on masters rowing issues, stay in touch through this page, and provide feedback to Susan at sjlinacre@gmail.com with any inquires or expressions of interest.
Some of the key activities of the Commission this year have involved;
1. Reviewing aspects of the AMRC, in particular the order of events, medals and handicaps.
The order of events needed to be reviewed as the number of races per session had become unbalanced with differential requirements for heats, semis and finals. A new order has been developed and is now publicly available on the 2014 AMRCRegatta Central page .
There have been two issues raised about medals. Firstly, should a medal be awarded if there is a single boat in a category? This particularly affects the older age categories, and there are strong arguments for awarding medals in such cases. This issue is also expected to be finalised shortly.
The second ‘medal issue’ is that it has been agreed that in order to encourage club rowing and to partially counter the increasing number of composite crews at the AMRC, it has been agreed that a gold medal will be awarded to the fastest ‘single club’ crew in each championship 8+ , 4+/- and 4x event, in addition to the standard medals, in the AMRC in Adelaide next year!
The handicaps to apply for masters rowing have been reviewed and new handicaps have been approved by RA to apply in 2014 AMRC. These have been provided to State Associations and are currently being included in a complete review of the Rowing Australia Rules of Racing. For those interested, the Handicaps Review Report and Recommendations can be viewed 2013 Handicaps Review Report and Recommendation.
2. Developing the Australian Masters Rowing Facebook page You can keep in touch with masters rowing community, and add your bit through the Facebook page. There is also interest in setting up a simple website for masters rowing in Australia. If you would like to get involved please get in touch.
3. Investigating additional masters rowing actives. The Commission is interested in supporting the development of other events, including those with a greater emphasis on the recreational side of rowing. If you have any good ideas you would like to help pursue, let the Commission know.