N.L. Royal St. John’s Regatta ends ‘sexist’ gender based rowing distances

Pending a trial run in June, men and women will row the same distances at the Royal St. John's Regatta in August for the first time in the race's 203-year history.

Pending a trial run in June, men and women will row the same distances at the Royal St. John’s Regatta in August for the first time in the race’s 203-year history, officials announced Monday.

The news comes after years of women rowers speaking out about the race’s traditional gender-based course lengths.

“We’ve been working for this for a long time,” rower Nancy Beaton said in an interview shortly after the announcement. “People have been fighting for it for a couple of generations.”

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.

Traditionally, the men rowed a 2.45-kilometre course, racing to the end of the narrow lake and back. Women, meanwhile, rowed half the distance, turning around in the centre of the lake and barrelling back to the start line.

But this year, the 204th regatta and 2022 rowing season will have a men’s short course and a women’s long course for the first time, officials said in a news release. Rowing season begins May 2.

The move follows the election in January of the race committee’s first female president and female vice-president team.

“We know that this is a great step towards the progression of our sport,” Ashley Peach, the regatta’s vice president and course captain, said in the release. A trial run with the new race distances is set for June 25, officials said.