Euromasters 2018 in Munich 26-29 July

Euromasters is the little sister of the Worldmasters and the regatta is promoted as the European Championships for Masters. All boat types are represented and you compete in age categories from 28 years and up. The oldest competitors were on the good side of 90 years old. Other competitors were back at the venue for the first time since the summer Olympic Games in 1972. 

The regatta is big and in total the program was 170 pages. I competed in three single scull races covering three age categories. Each category had – if I remember correctly – 35 to 50 competitors. All the races were hard with headwind all days and the 1x races were 10-15 seconds slower than expected.

Unfortunately, in all three races I ended up with an Austrian woman that was faster than me. It was a small consolation prize that I consistently rowed the second fastest times of all female single scullers while only training half as much as the Austrian woman. Next year I hope to also compete in a couple of team boats.

The great part of a Masters regatta compared with a normal regatta is that the rowers are more social. I met the girl that came second at the Swiss Masters Championships and we spend a couple of hours one afternoon talking about good rowing lakes in Switzerland, where to find a good coach and perhaps rowing some 2x. In addition, I spoke to another swiss crew and I was offered a place on an 8+ somewhere in the Zurich area?!? The Masters regattas are a great place to expand your rowing network if you row some fast times.

As something new the regatta had created something they called the Munich Master Trophy. Only single sculls could compete in the Trophy races and they were more competitive than the standard races where each heat has a winner. In the trophy races they gathered all the single scullers with the fastest times and have them compete.  It is more like a regular regatta med initial races and finals. It is a great initiative and I had a great race. Overall, I placed 2nd in the Masters trophy race – again behind the Austrian woman. Without having re-checked the results I think that the Austrian and myself rowed the fastest race W1x at the regatta across all ages.

Mostly, I do not really care about medals and I am happy to give them away to kids to play with, but I do have a handful of medals that I want to save. The Masters Trophy medal is one of those.