Age group rowing competition

[dmc64]

Hi to all here, I’m new to the forum and returning to rowing after a 20 yr hiatus.
My question is, how do they typically break down age group classes for regular and head races?
Are there still HWT/LWT designations? Do they break into 5yr or 10yr age intervals?
Thanks ….and Happy Holidays

[Cyclist2]

Welcome (back) to rowing!

Here is US Rowing's classification page: https://usrowing.org/sports/2016/6/28/6 ... 37238.aspx.

[Tsnor]

Hi to all here, I’m new to the forum and returning to rowing after a 20 yr hiatus.
My question is, how do they typically break down age group classes for regular and head races?
Are there still HWT/LWT designations? Do they break into 5yr or 10yr age intervals?
Thanks ….and Happy Holidays

Short version is they average the age on the boat and then apply a time handicap, typically based on the delta with youngest boat in the race. (Coxswain does not count. )

If you look here at results for the 2021 head of the fish, and search for masters races you'll see age, elapsed and adjusted times. Adjusted is after the age handicap is applied. (The times are hard to read, they are in two columns - minutes and seconds) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... ingle=true

The racing classes given in the paper linked above are used, but often for 4s and 8s there are few enough boats that they just create a single class and fill up heats by average age. Example, there were only 8 masters 8+ at HOF.

HWT/LWT works the same way. If there are enough entries to have a class then there's a LWT class, if not then the LWTs get merged with HWTs into a single class. Example: there wasn't a LWT masters 8+ class at HOF, but there were plenty of lightweight singles and doubles classes.