New Finals Format for Worlds is an Olympic Trial

August 30, 2011

BLED, Slovenia – It’s all about exposure.

When the rowing competition at the 2012 Olympic Games begins, the international federation that governs the sport wants to make sure it is maximizing the time it can get on streamed and live broadcasts.

So, instead of 14 finals crammed into two days, rowing finals are going to be spread out over four days, just like they are this week at the 2011 World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia.

Beginning Thursday afternoon, the new finals format will begin and include one of the regatta’s traditional premier events – the men’s eight. The women’s eight final follows on Friday.

“This started as a result of our analysis of the impact of the Olympic regatta and the media impact at the Olympic regatta,” said FISA executive director Matt Smith. “We’ve seen that, really, to get attention at the Olympic games where there is so much there, that only when medals are going around necks and flags are going up flagpoles do you really get the attention of (broadcast) and the written media.

“So we went back, went through our Olympic program and went to the four-day finals program,” he said.  “We also have been advised by several television experts that we are too long and we should be more focused with our Olympic program, with one-hour maximum.

“So you’ll see, the finals all fit into, more or less, one hour, one hour and twenty minutes. This puts us in the framework of the attention span of television media around the world,” he said.

Not having the so-called big boats as the climax to the seven-day world championships, and other questions about the compacted schedule, have raised some eyebrows here in Bled. But according to according to Smith, the new schedule is being tested in advance of the Olympics, and is not necessarily what will happen at future world championships.

“We decided we better rehearse this for the sake of the teams and the athletes in the two world championships we have coming up. So last year at Karapiro, we did adaptive (finals) on Thursday, and we did three days of Olympic-class medals Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” he said.

“We decided that for this year, the priority would be to absolutely give the athletes and teams a preview of how it would be at the Olympic Games.”

For a complete schedule of this week’s finals at the 2011 World Rowing Championships, visit www.worldrowing.com.

Ed Moran

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