Dear Members,

Access to appropriate competitive opportunities is essential for developing athletes wanting to assess progress and to further their development along the performance pathway.  We understand that one of the challenges we have in Canada is an already very full regatta calendar, combined with the cost of attending specific events, which for some can be prohibitive and thus limits their development opportunities.

With this in mind, we are re-evaluating our approach to using events for athlete ranking and selection. Included in this work is having to make the difficult decision not to host the National Rowing Championships this year. While we are disappointed not to host our pinnacle championship event this year, we are taking this opportunity to assess and determine the evolution of this event.

In Canada we have several regattas that provide an excellent athlete experience so it is clear our new approach will include fostering more domestic racing while simultaneously identifying the top rowers in the country.  We are looking forward to the National Team racing alongside our community this summer at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. In January, RCA announced the return of the Canada Cup Regatta. This event, hosted by Western University, aims to showcase the top Provincial and Territorial athletes in singles, doubles, pairs, and mixed-gender quads and eights competing over distances of 500m to 2000m in a sprint format that creates athlete participation through an exciting race program.  As proof of concept, this event will be evaluated by RCA as a permanent fixture on the performance pathway.

RCA’s High Performance Program encourages athletes to use other existing Canadian events to build their performance portfolio. For the remainder of the 2025 competitive season we wish to point to additional specific regattas that we believe already often draw performance rowers.  We encourage athletes to focus on small boat performances at the following regattas:

• Head of the Trent Regatta, in Peterborough, Ontario, October 4-5; or
• Burnaby Small Boat Regatta in Burnaby, British Columbia, October 5.

While not currently built into RCA’s formal selection criteria, competing at these well-established regattas is an opportunity for athletes to assess their progress against their peers and provides RCA an opportunity to monitor results from a large subset of rowers from within Canada

Looking ahead to 2026, we are in the process of identifying additional events of interest to our High Performance program as well as selection-related opportunities that will be published at a later date.

For questions, please contact Rowing Canada Aviron’s High Performance Director, Adam Parfitt.