8 May 2021

By Göran R Buckhorn

Peter Mallory’s belated 2020 Christmas present has finally arrived, Göran R Buckhorn writes. And it was well worth the wait.

In late December last year, rowing historian and writer Peter Mallory wrote on HTBS that on 1 January 2021, World Rowing (former FISA) was going to make available Peter’s masterwork, the four-volume set The Sport of Rowing, free to read for everyone. Quite a Christmas present if you ask me. The Sport of Rowing, which was published by the River and Rowing Museum to great acclaim, has been unavailable more or less since it was published in 2011.

As so many times before during the last year, COVID-19 threw a wrench into the works and the posting of The Sport of Rowing on the World Rowing website was delayed. However, after five months of postponements, Peter told HTBS that his grand work is now up on the World Rowing website. Peter writes:

This is a significant further step in sharing and spreading my life’s work, and I couldn’t be more grateful to [Executive Director of World Rowing] Matt Smith and to Brian Orsini, who did the technical work necessary to make this day possible. Ten years ago, FISA played a key role in the original effort to publish TSOR, so it is only fitting that World Rowing now becomes the ultimate conduit for the proliferation of the heritage of our sport that I managed to gather over a lifetime of inquiry followed by seven years of concentrated research.

You will find Peter Mallory’s four-volume The Sport of Rowing here.