Rowing Sports Medicine and Science Conference 2018 & FISA Coaches Conference…The presented studies and insights ranged from rowing in Germany to the blood vessels of the rower and provided plenty of inspiration. Innovations were also presented, one of them was striking because of the enthusiasm of the inventor, the Australian Ian Randall (45). His talk on Friday morning was titled ‘A new oar with an attached hydrofoil limits diving and increasing boat speed’, and that covered exactly the that. Randall presented himself as someone who had just come up with that idea during a sabbatical of his job as a fine arts teacher. … And then he came up with a piece of plastic about which he spoke now with fire and yet modestly. Columbus, that idea. Those few people with some knowledge of water to whom he presented his story did not even think it was a crazy idea. He claims that a blade with the extra strip gives it a speed advantage because such a blade has less contact with the water than a conventional blade. Randall’s story can be seen at roeiblad.nl/nummer29. In the USA rowers have already scored pb’s with this, he says. He himself rowed, as a veteran, five seconds per five hundred meters faster than without the strip. And for coastal rowing he sees great advantages from a safety point of view. How that strip looks exactly, and how it works can be read on his website. Rowing! will test his Randallfoil in 2019.
[google translation … apologies]