Like all sports, rowing has been shaped not only by the athletes who practise it, but also by the politics of the environments in which they row. Since the earliest documented “modern” rowing races took place between professional watermen on the River Thames in the late seventeenth century, the sport has been divided along class lines. Professional rowing grew alongside its amateur cousin, thriving in London and Newcastle and attracting huge crowds, substantial prize money, and betting. Yet these races were largely the preserve of working professionals, while amateur racing was dominated by the upper and middle classes.
The origins of “amateur” rowing
In 1883, just a year after its foundation, the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) set out a definition of an “amateur” in stark terms.
An amateur was not, as the ARA declared, “a person employed in manual labour for money or wages, a mechanic, an artisan or a person engaged in menial duty, or a person who had ever taken part in any open competition for a stake.” With the further inclusion of a clause banning anyone who was a “member of a rowing club containing anyone liable to disqualification,” rowing was effectively segregated to white-collar professions.
These rules – which seem bizarre today, given the number of working club rowers and volunteer coaches – were repeatedly challenged at both domestic and international levels as the sport expanded into the twentieth century. In 1936, for example, the Australian men’s eight was banned from Henley on the grounds that several of the crew had worked as policemen. In 1920, Jack Kelly (father of future film star and Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly) was rejected from the Diamond Sculls at Henley for having worked as a bricklayer. Kelly went on to enormous success, winning multiple Olympic gold medals and later serving in important legislative positions in his native Pennsylvania.
You might think that, especially in the face of public outcry over such high-profile exclusions, the authorities in British and international rowing would have reconsidered their definition of amateurism. But, you would be wrong.
Restrictions continued
In the post-war era, the ARA continued to exclude working-class rowers by narrowing the definition further to disqualify anyone “who has ever taught, pursued, or assisted in the practice of rowing, sculling or other athletic exercises of any kind for profit.” In other words, if one had ever coached rowing, or indeed any other sport, mended a boat, or steered for payment, then one could not compete.
In the post-war period, these restrictions arguably contributed to the slow growth of a sport already competing for attention with rugby, cricket, and football. The ARA’s attitude that one should not be working if one wished to row at the highest level was typified by the ARA Almanack’s “Review” in 1906.
In contrast to what the anonymous author called “foreign nations, where sport was a matter of national prestige,” the piece argued:
“In this country we recognise the strength of character required for a top amateur to dedicate his spare time to his chosen sport, but it is foreign to our ideals for amateur sport to be permitted to interfere with employment or studies and in this respect our outlook is unlikely to change.”
A tentative shift
However, as the decades wore on, there were tentative signs of shifting attitudes.
In 1966, the ARA added a sub-clause allowing schoolmasters to be considered amateurs as coaches, provided their coaching was concurrent with teaching an academic subject. The following year, the blanket ban on sports coaches was lifted.
As is often the case with sporting governance documents, the ARA constitution was not always transparent. A small change in wording in the 1982 Almanack had major implications. The rule stating that:
“No person shall be considered an amateur who derives or who has derived profit or material gain as a direct result of coaching or competing in the sport”
was altered to remove coaching, leaving only profit “as a direct result of competing in the sport.” This omission was seismic, though it was partly contradicted by the retention of another rule:
“A teacher shall not lose amateur status by giving instruction in rowing in addition to academic subjects to students within the establishment by which he is employed.”
With the growing commercialisation of sport globally in the 1980s, it became a matter of when – not if – rowing would become professionalised. This process accelerated after the ARA converted into a limited company, which opened the door to funding from Sports Aid and the British Olympic Association. Athletes were still unable to profit personally from sponsorship, however, since sponsorship deals had to be pre-agreed by the ARA.
Despite public appeals from athletes themselves – notably members of the silver medal-winning men’s eight at the 1976 Montreal Olympics —funding remained extremely limited. Although the International Olympic Committee removed restrictions on professional competitors from 1988 onwards, rowing’s official policy of amateurism persisted until 1998.
The future
It seems nonsensical today, given the widespread presence of club rowers who also coach, and the working professionals who give up their time to build top-class club rowing in Britain, that there was ever a time when access to the sport was so openly exclusionary.
The removal of these barriers not only paved the way for professionalism in rowing, helping Great Britain become arguably one of the most successful rowing nations in recent Olympic history, but also made the sport more accessible to people from ordinary backgrounds, and therefore more reflective of the society in which we live.
