Photo left: Maike Diekmann from Namibia, winner Women’s Open 2000m. On the deck at her training camp venue on the Vaal River in South Africa

Photo right: Peter Purcell-Gilpin from Zimbabwe, runner up Men’s Open 2000m. Racing in his garage in the UK while on nation-wide lockdown.

St Andrew’s School for Girls hosted the virtual African rowing qualifier for the World Indoor Rowing Championship! There were a total of 550 rowers from 19 countries across Africa.

While we all got off to a shaky start with a few connection issues getting athletes into their race lobbies, we were soon back on track and the rest of the day went really as coaches and athletes got the hang of logging in and preparing to race virtually. A few panics occurred when a circuit breaker tripped, leaving us grateful that our main systems were all on laptops, but we soon had that resolved. The St Andrew’s coaches kept the supporters entertained with their commentating and our rowing support committee worked tirelessly in the background checking results and keeping the team well supplied with refreshemnts. We are extremely grateful to the guys at Time Team, particularly Harm and Niek who seem to be the world’s greatest multitaskers.

Thank you to World Rowing for the opportunity to host this event, a first for Africa.

St Andrew’s is proud to be involved in an event that reaches all points of Africa, from Cape Verde to Djibouti, and Cape to Cairo.

Photos supplied