RowingRelated

This week's video comes to us from Down Under, and features highlights from the 2012 Australian Boat Race—an event that eerily resembled the proceedings in 2014, with Sydney taking top honors on the men's side, while the MUWBC women prevailed for the fifth time in five tries. The race featured a number of Australian national team athletes, and while the Melbourne men managed to wrench the trophy from their Sydney counterparts in 2013, this year Fergus Pragnell and company reclaimed the cup on home water. You can read a summary of the racing , which saw SUBC top MUBC by 12 seconds, and MUWBC defeat SUWBC by a very convincing 33 seconds, on the official site of the Australian Boat Race.

The above feature comes to us from the prolific rowing filmmaker, Mike Nicholson , and is the latest in a series of rowing documentaries that Nicholson has out together detailing the sport's past and present. Here, finally, we not only get a sense for the other athletes and for the regatta itself, but also for Nicholson's own background—a life that has been closely tied to rowing from an early age. And, to the delight of rowing enthusiasts and historians alike, his passion for filming and documenting our sport goes back almost as far. Even better—his work is posted to his YouTube Channel , available to all for free. Here, we catch up with Mike on his personal background in rowing and as a filmmaker.

The final day of this year's Henley Royal Regatta featured some outstanding match-ups, as well as blistering times, as some of the best crews in the world laid it all on the line for those coveted little red boxes. And, as is the case every year at Henley-on-Thames, there were a number of extremely close contests—tremendous battles that saw crews hang on to narrow margins, or walk through early leaders to edge opponents at the line. Let's take a look, shall we? As we expected, the final of the women's single pitted defending Olympic champion Mirka Knapkova against standout Kiwi sculler Emma Twigg . This time, Knapkova, who finished fourth just back of Twigg at the Holland Beker Regatta the previous weekend, walked away to victory—the Czech sculler equaled the course record for the event, despite winning by the verdict, 'Easily.' Quite an impressive result for Knapkova, and one that will no doubt get the attention of Holland Beker champion Kim Crow of Australia...

Australia's Kim Crow might just be the best athlete in women's rowing, coming off an Olympiad with two trips to the podium, and now adding another Australian national title in the women's open single to her outstanding rowing resume. Fittingly, Part 9 (above) of Mike Nicholson's newest film, ' School for Sculling ,' is dedicated to Crow, who entered the racing in Sydney battling some physical issues that have kept her away from her regular training and racing regime, but who still got it done against a very talented field (including U.S. double Olympic champion Elle Logan , who finished just under three seconds back of Crow in second place). The racing at the first World Rowing Cup of 2013 kicks off on Friday morning at 8am Sydney local time, and the strongest squads are likely to be very familiar from the 2012 Olympic Games, with a great deal of the international talent focused on the women's side. Team GB will be looking to get the Road to Rio sta...

As we draw ever closer to the 2013 Sydney International Rowing Regatta , we thought a look back at last year's Australian Rowing Championships might be a good fit for this week (thanks to Mike Nicholson). At last year's Aussie Open Rowing Championships and King's & Queen's Cup Interstate Regatta, the heat was on, both on water and on the temperature gauge at Australia's newest rowing venue out west—Armadale, near Perth. Not only is this video a good introduction to the regatta, it's also a great showcase of elite technical rowing, with the likes of 2012 Olympic medalists Drew Ginn , Will Lockwood , Josh Dunkley Smith , and Kim Crow in the mix (Crow in both the women's single and the 'victorious Victoria' women's eight). There are already a number of international rowing federations on site in Oz in preparation for this year's event, which will include the first World Rowing Cup of the summer, and, from the look of it, the GB athlet...

The Australian national rowing team is perhaps stronger than ever, with competitive crews across the board, boasting some of the most impressive individual talent anywhere in the world. Kim Crow is among those, having medaled at the world level as both a sweep rower and sculler, and having shown this summer that she is a force to be reckoned with not only double (following a silver medal in Bled last year, and another at the Munich World Rowing Cup stop last month along with partner Brooke Pratley ), but also the single–incredibly, just days after winning the women's single at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in Lucerne, Crow went on to take a silver medal at the Lucerne World Cup behind only perennial contender Xiuyun Zhang of China, and ahead of 2011 world champion Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic. Drew Ginn and his new-look 'Oarsome Foursome' are looking like they could provide some serious fireworks in London this summer, having gotten the racing se...