The fastest rowers in Germany meet at the weekend on the Main in Schweinfurt. They are running for the 26th German sprint distance championship – for juniors between 15 and 18 and for so-called seniors between 19 and 27 years. The special feature: at the German Sprint Championships, only club teams can get on team boats from two to eight and therefore no racing community of different clubs. 556 rowers from 61 clubs signed up for it. The largest registration field is the female one. It is made up of 24 athletes.
Entry into the final only through qualifying heats
To qualify for the final, rowers must pass the preliminaries, repechage and semi-finals. There are 176 races in total. The athletes also come from rowing strongholds such as Berlin, Dortmund, Dresden, Essen and Hamburg. Athletes from Rendsburg on the Kiel Canal in Schleswig-Holstein and from Rostock in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have the longest journey.
Local favorites from Schweinfurt and Würzburg
The Bavarian rowers come from clubs in Würzburg, Schweinfurt, Kaufering, Nuremberg and Erlangen. The “Schweinfurter Rowing Club Franconia from 1882” is represented with eleven boats. Lorenz Grimm of Schweinfurt can calculate the greatest possibilities. The 17-year-old finished fourth in the quadruple teams at this year’s Junior World Championships in Varese, Italy. Fabio Kress of the “Academic Rowing Club Würzburg” is also a member. Kress won bronze in the men’s light quadruple at the World Rowing Championships in the Czech Republic two weeks ago.
Good view over the boating fields
The preliminary heats last until around 18:30 on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, the final races start at 1pm after the morning heats. Spectators can follow the races from the grounds of the Schweinfurt Rowing Club, among other places. The club grounds can be reached via the “fortifications”. The organizer advises visitors to park further away and then drive through the park to the club grounds, as the “fortifications” are a dead end. Spectators have a good view of the finish line directly from the Schweinfurt city station cycle path on the other side of the Main. Admission is free everywhere.
Schweinfurt’s “championship creators”
The organizer of the German Sprint Championships is the “Schweinfurter Rowing Club Franken von 1882” of the German Rowing Association. For many years it has organized the “Bavarian Rowing Championships” over 1,000 meters alternating with Munich for many years and has a lot of experience in organizing rowing regattas and related championships. To ensure that everything runs smoothly, around 130 of the association’s 430 members help out on a voluntary basis. In 2001 the German Sprint Rowing Championships were held in Schweinfurt. The first German rowing championships took place in Schweinfurt as early as 1926.
