USRowing Partners with C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints for 2020 Indoor National Championships

Following the successful launch of its inaugural indoor championship, USRowing will partner with the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints World Indoor Rowing Championships for the 2020 USRowing Indoor National Championships.

The event will be held March 1 at the Boston University Track and Tennis Center.

The inaugural USRowing Indoor National Championships was held this past February in Long Beach and crowned national champions in nearly 200 events across open, junior, under 23, para and masters categories, including both open weights and lightweights. Race categories for 2020 will be announced at a later date, but national championship medals will be awarded for first, second and third place, and winners will still receive the coveted C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints hammer.

“We are thrilled to bring the USRowing Indoor National Championships to the East Coast next year and to partner with the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints for our second running of the event,” said USRowing Chief Executive Officer Patrick McNerney. “C.R.A.S.H.-B. is where indoor racing got its start, and it’s great to engage that history as we also expand the sport to a wider audience outside of our traditional rowers.”

Indoor rowing continues to grow as a rowing discipline. It has become more than another training tool for on-water rowers. Indoor rowing machines can now be found in fitness gyms, rehabilitation clinics, schools, universities and CrossFit facilities around the world.

“We are so pleased to be partnering with USRowing for the 2020 C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints,” said Natasha Strom, Commodore of the C.R.A.S.H.-B. Sprints. “For nearly 40 years, we have been producing an athlete-centered, world-class indoor rowing championship event. We are looking forward to continuing to grow for another 40 years as we, along with USRowing, work to advance the sport of rowing and indoor rowing.”

From its beginnings in the early 1980s as a fun little regatta of about 20 rowers at Harvard University’s Newell Boathouse held to break up the monotony of winter training, C.R.A.S.H.-B. has grown into the International World Indoor Rowing Championships that it is now.

The regatta outgrew Newell, and then the IAB (now the Malkin Athletic Center) and the QRAC (Radcliffe Quadrangle Athletic Center), before moving to MIT’s Rockwell Cage for many years. In 1995, the regatta moved to Harvard’s Indoor Track Facility, and then in 1997, C.R.A.S.H.-B. moved to an even larger and ultra-modern facility, the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College. From 2008-2018, Boston University’s Agganis Arena, a state of the art facility just downstream of the original C.R.A.S.H.-B. site, hosted the event. Beginning in 2019, the C.R.A.S.H.-B. moved to the Boston University Track and Tennis Center.

In the beginning, the race was five miles on the Concept2 Model A ergometer. From the introduction of the Model B ergometer in the mid-1980s through 1995, the race was 2,500 meters on the new digital display, because the times were comparable even with the equipment change. To meet specific training demands of international coaches who stressed 6k and 2k rankings in the winter, the distance changed to 2,000 meters starting with the 1996 event. The race is currently rowed on the latest Concept2 Model D ergometers, which are used by athletes at universities, clubs, schools, and national teams around the world.

USRowing is a nonprofit organization recognized by the United States Olympic Committee as the governing body for the sport of rowing in the United States. USRowing has 83,000 individual members and 1,350 member organizations, offering rowing programs for all. USRowing receives generous support from the National Rowing Foundation and its corporate sponsors and partners.