Elite Competition for Non-Paralympians

So you didn’t make the GB Paralympic squad? What are your options for exceptional, elite-level competition in adaptive/pararowing if the Paralympics are now off the table? Whether you are striving for elite pararowing achievements so just looking for a 2024 New Year’s challenge, a wide range of elite opportunities exist in the adaptive and pararowing world.

• National Championships – Most of the leading UK national competitions now feature adaptive and pararowing events.
  • British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC): The biggest UK adaptive/para event of them all. A prestige event for adaptive and non-adaptive rowers alike.
  • National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships (NJIRC): Like BRIC, the biggest junior adaptive event of the year with over 100 competitors.
  • British Championships: Brit Champs has in the past held para events and the organisers are committed to this continuing.
  •  Junior Sculling Regatta: Held at the Dorney Olympic Rowing lake, organisers have regularly welcomed adaptive events if a critical mass of entries can be arranged.
  • Junior Inter-Regional Regatta (JIRR): Sort of an equivalent of “playing for one’s county” but teams are organised into larger regions covering the UK.
• International Events – The Paralympics (and the other FISA World Cup and World Championships which require national body sponsorship) are not the only international events on can consider.
  • Women’s Henley: Henley is the biggest annual UK rowing event and the Women Henley Regatta has the same venue, stands, ceremony held just before HRR. Women’s Henley features the Grosvenor Cup for pararowing in any year when at least 3 athletes of either a fixed-seat (PR1/PR2) or sliding-seat (PR3) classification enter.
  • Head of the Charles: Simply the biggest rowing regatta in the world. More rowers than the entire Summer Olympics has competitors. And a huge adaptive/para division.
  • Head of the Yarra: The biggest rowing competition in the Eastern Hemisphere in the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia. Only eights, but a “Para 8+” category if you can cobble together enough friends (or contact the organisers to be included in a composite).
  • International Mixed Ability Regatta: Held in Ireland and Italy most recently, this annua event attracts adaptive rowers from around the world including a now regular contingent from Stratford-upon-Avon.
• Challenge Events – A number of distinctive events are held which are a rowing career challenge for any rower and they welcome adaptive entries.
  • Great Ouse: 21.5k!
  • Boston Marathon: If the Ouse is not long enough, then this event covers 50.2k!!
• Concept 2 World Adaptive Records: Concept2 maintains a comprehensive database of world (and British) records on the rowing machine by distance, adaptive classification, gender and age. So there are lots of targets to shoot for and British adaptive rowers have snared many of these worldwide honours.