Women to row same distance as men for 1st time in 204-year-old St. John’s regatta

Until Thursday morning, the men exclusively rowed a 2.45-kilometre course from one end of the narrow lake to the other. The women rowed half the distance.

Four crews of women rowers will make history on Thursday morning in St. John’s, as they race from one end of Quidi Vidi Lake to the other along a course historically reserved for men.

After decades of advocacy from women rowers, the Royal St. John’s Regatta will include a women’s long course for the first time in its 204-year history. The change is welcome, said rower Siobhan Duff earlier this week. But she said she wishes it came 15 years earlier, when she was on the water winning championships.

“The regatta is, if nothing else, steeped in tradition,” Duff said in an interview. “Change comes slowly, sort of like the Vatican.”

The Royal St. John’s Regatta bills itself as the oldest organized sporting event in North America. The annual day of races takes place on Quidi Vidi Lake, a 1,600-metre-long body of water in the city that flows through a historic former fishing village and empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

The races go ahead only if weather permits, and city residents get a civic holiday on whatever day that happens. The regatta is supposed to run on the first Wednesday of August, but windy conditions forced officials this year to postpone the race until Thursday.

The event attracts tens of thousand of people, many of whom clap and cheer on the lake’s grassy shores as the rowing teams speed by. Others stroll along the lake’s shores, stopping at beer tents, food stalls, bouncy castles, pony rides and games of chance.

Most city services shut down for the day, and its public transit arm offers dedicated shuttles in and out of the party grounds.

Until Thursday morning, the men exclusively rowed a 2.45-kilometre course from one end of the narrow lake to the other. The women rowed half the distance, turning around in the centre of the lake and barreling back to the start line.