At last weekend's Quadrennial Congress, the member federations of World Rowing approved four major changes that will shape the World Championship program for Classic Rowing starting in 2025 and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles.

1. Eliminating Repechages - World Rowing has adopted a new progression system with no repechage round. Instead, the top two crews in each heat will advance directly to the next round, and the remaining spaces in the next round will go to the crews with the next fastest times. An overview of the newly adopted bylaw on the progression system, and how it works for different numbers of entries, can be found here.

2. Adding a Mixed Eight Event - the World Championships will add a Mixed Eight event that will be comprised of four women and four men who will double up for the race. The intent is to create an additional event and medal opportunity for athletes already competing at the championships.

3. Discontinuing Undersubscribed Events - the following events with low participation numbers in recent years will be removed from these World Championship programs, based on a Strategic Event Review:

• Lightweight Pairs, Men's and Women's, from Senior and U23 Worlds
• Lightweight Quads, Men's and Women's, from Senior and U23 Worlds
• Coxed Fours, Men's and Women's, from the U23 and U19 Worlds
• PR2 Singles, Men's and Women's, from Senior Worlds
• PR3 Pairs, Men's and Women's, from Senior Worlds

The three World Championships will now offer the same events across the board, with one exception: a PR3 Single for both Men and Women will be added to the U23 Worlds as a way to develop future Paralympic athletes. These changes, now adopted, can be found in this chart from the proposal.

4. Updating the Gender Policy - Rule 13 on Men's and Women's Events has been amended to say "World Rowing will maintain two separate sex categories for rowing events: Women, for rowers who are eligible under this Rule to compete in a women’s event, and men, for rowers who are not eligible to compete in a women’s event. This shall be an open category." The Women's category will be defined as for athletes "assigned and recognized as female at the time of the rower's birth" or "declared as eligible to compete as a woman pursuant to this Rule and its Bye-Law," according to the text proposed for the final vote last Saturday.

Mixed Eights May Be In For LA28

In addition to these changes for the World Championships, World Rowing announced that the Mixed Eight has been proposed for the LA 2028 Olympic program. Because the event will use athletes doubling-up, the Mixed Eight could become an additional medal race at the Olympics within the strict athlete quota number for the Games set by the International Olympic Committee. The rowing events for LA28 and rowing's 2028 athlete quota will be voted on by the IOC this spring, on April 9th.

Since the mixed eight would involve athletes already qualified for the Games, the racing could include any country with four women and four men racing at the Olympics. Had the event been on the program in Paris, for instance, nations like Ireland, New Zealand, and Switzerland could have formed mixed eights and competed, even though none of them had qualified a men's or women's eight for those Games.

The 15 Year Plan to "Transform" Rowing

Amending the Rules of Racing can only happen at a Quadrennial Congress, at the start of the new Olympic cycle. Making these changes now is part of a 15 year plan World Rowing started working on in 2022, with the goal of re-envisioning and re-positioning the sport across the Olympiads leading to the 2036 Games.

The changes enacted at the Congress to the number of events and the progression system will give World Rowing the ability to conduct smaller World Championships, and creates flexibility within the racing schedule to permit the kind of doubling envisioned for the Mixed Eight. World Rowing sees smaller championships as more sustainable in part due to lower costs to member federations and hosts.

Towards the end of the Congress, World Rowing Executive Director Vincent Gaillard and members of the Council provided updates on the status of the 15 year plan which mentioned several upcoming initiatives, including:

• the possibility that Indoor or "Connected" Rowing could become a third Olympic discipline if accepted for 2027's inaugural Olympic E-Sports Games in Riyadh
• looking at creating a system of World Rankings for athletes and teams
• exploring the idea of making World Cup results part of a qualification process for World Championships each year
• building ways for World Rowing to host and distribute content without relying on outside broadcast partners
• establishing a Beach Sprints Series similar to the World Cup with an outside partner as the discipline gets ready to make its Olympic debut in 2028

Overall, the goal of the plan, according to Gaillard's presentation, is to "transform the reach, image, and revenues of rowing." The plan focuses on all three rowing disciplines--classic, coastal, and indoor, or "connected" rowing--as well as World Rowing governance.

You can watch the entire presentation via the recording of the Congress, starting here on World Rowing's Youtube channel.

World Rowing's press release on the 2025 Quadrennial Congress can be found here.