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 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...

Today marks the final day of the 2011 RoRys, with our awards for the most impressive performances in international rowing be handed out to some outstanding athletes, coaches and programs. There is certainly no shortage of deserving candidates, and congratulations to all those who competed at the World level this year. And now, the 'Elite' RoRys go to... RoRy for 'Programme' of the Year Great Britain, Jurgen Gröbler, David Tanner Phenomenal performance from the entire squad, across men's and women's open and lightweight events, 14 total medals, on pace for an unparalleled level of success in London next year. The women's eight has made significant improvements, moving past the Romanians and the Dutch to take the bronze medal this year (as we predicted ), the women's pair continues to battle it out with New Zealand for the top spot on the podium, and the women's double of Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins is looking nearly unbeatable going into...

Women's single sculler Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic had quite a summer in 2011, winning Henley, and building on a solid third place finish in Lucerne to find herself atop the medal stand in Bled, and once again in Plovdiv, where she took the title in the W1x by roughly six seconds at the European Rowing Championships over the weekend ( full results from World Rowing ). Knapkova began the 2011 campaign with a fifth place finish in Munich. She then opted to compete at Henley Royal Regatta rather than at the second World Cup, and won the event, setting a tone for the rest of the year. Now, like the men's field, there appears to be a group at the top of women's sculling, all of whom could win on any given day, given their level of talent and experience. The W1x A Final in Bled will likely be very similar to that in London next year, and right now there appear to be five athletes (Xiuyun Zhang of China, Emma Twigg of NZ, Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus, Frida Svensson of...