Looking back on the Row to the Moon challenge

Looking back on the Row to the Moon challenge


In conjunction with British Rowing, Rowing Australia and Rowing NZ, we invited indoor rowers worldwide to log their training metres with the shared goal of accumulating, as one singular community, 384.4 million metres – the distance from Earth to the Moon.

The results are now in – over the full length of the challenge from May 21-31, the global community covered an astounding 51,982,869 metres!

To put that distance into context, it equates to:

  • More than 63 trips to the International Space Station (and back!)
  • 1.2 laps of the equator
  • 4.7 laps around the moon
  • Or over 2599 lengths of the Sea Forest Waterway – the host venue for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games

The challenge was also a great celebration of mass-participation, with 1042 entries coming in from 32 different countries worldwide. Great Britain logged the greatest number of metres with 16,320,337.

Canada’s 204 participants contributed the third highest number of metres to the Row to the Moon challenge with 10,401,454.

Steve Yang (M60-69) led all Canadians with 360,000 metres, which also put him in seventh place amongst participants worldwide. Nadine Francis (F40-49) was the second highest contributor for Canada with 257,666 metres.

RCA would like to thank and congratulate everyone who contributed to the success of the Row to the Moon challenge as well as extend a special thank you to the Canadian Space Agency and astronaut David Saint-Jacques for cheering us on.

Full results can be found via the online Participant Leaderboard, Country Leaderboard, and Progress Chart.

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