20 February 2021

The finals at the World Rowing Indoor Championships (WRICH), presented by Concept2, will be held between 23 and 27 February. Due to COVID-19, the championships will be held virtually.

The qualification races were held virtually between 27 November 2020 and 7 February 2021. The WRICH finals will be raced in real time between the finalists in their race categories. There are 935 finalists from 63 countries competing.

‘When it became clear that a physical Indoor Championships was not going to be possible this year, we immediately focused all our efforts on creating a virtual remote global participation event that would retain all the high quality of presentation and competition of our previous World Championships,’ said Jean-Christophe Rolland, president of World Rowing, according to the organisation’s website.

Rolland continued: ‘Thanks to the very strong support of our global indoor rowing community, we will have three days of live-streamed finals, enhanced by virtual technology, expert commentary, graphics and interviews. Our sincere thanks also go to the Presenting Sponsor Concept2 and Cloud Services Sponsor, Tencent.’

Live streaming of the races will be available to watch on www.worldrowing.com and World Rowing’s YouTube channel.

The full list of entries is here.

To help you get in the right mood, whether you are a competitor or spectator, following is a video of the highlights of the 2020 FISA World Rowing Indoor Championships, which took place 7-8 February 2020 in the Stade Pierre de Coubertin in Paris. At that time, COVID-19 had not yet put a ban on rowing gatherings.