Top New Sport: ERG Rowing Picture Reviews

As the winter weather continues to have SFU in a deep freeze, rowers are finding alternate ways to work out with the ergometer indoors and avoid the ice-laden waters.

The erg allows rowers to race against each other to see who truly is the fastest as they cannot blame currents, waves, wind, and flipping their boat as causes of their slow speeds. Recruiters also use these times to try and recruit new rowers to their schools.

The first Sunday of February was the National Indoor Rowing Championships, also known as Monster Erg, and they were held at the University of Victoria. This race is a two-kilometre sprint on these ergs and usually takes between six and eight minutes to finish, depending on the size of the rower. Last year, Jody Schuurman won a national women’s title and she is now rowing for the Canadian U-23 team.

SFU sent a number of rowers to compete this year and ended up doing very well. The novice men were the most impressive of the team. In the lightweight category were Robin Munshaw and Jesse Greiner who won second and third place, respectively. For the heavyweight, novice Michael Maloney came in third place, only four seconds behind first, beating out 14 UVic and UFV rowers in the competition.