About Last Week
This blog is about lightweight women's rowing and therefore the growth of lightweight women's rowing. One of the things holding back that growth, is the commonly held idea that lightweight women rowers are more likely to have eating disorders than their college attending female peers. I have never seen any studies that support that notion and therefore I believe it to be a red herring. I could certainly be wrong, but I just have yet to see anything to suggest that.
This idea seems to be held most strongly by the NCAA and certain athletic directors and heavyweight coaches. As a counter, I like to point out the hypocrisy of thinking proportionately more lightweights have eating disorders, while not also worrying that proportionately more heavyweights have a BMI above 25. (Both of which, by the way, I suspect are false.) The Yale "Food" video was a perfect example of this. As I said, had this been done by lightweights, alarm bells would have been rung all over campus. I, however, thought it would have been as funny done by lightweights as it was done by heavyweights.
In this case, my target was the NCAA and all of those who believe that lightweights are destined to eating disorders. The heavyweights simply suffered collateral damage. As those who have read this blog for any length of time know, I'm not about to let worries about political correctness stop me from telling the emperor he has no clothes.
There is another point. I've known for some time that certain readers were using FITD to mock lightweight rowing. Although it was unintended, the "Food" post smoked those readers out. I could not ask for a more powerful statement of why lightweights cannot leave their fate in the hands of predominantly heavyweight organizations (i.e. CRCA and NCAA) than the kind of sentiments that were posted as comments. (This attitude is hardly new. We've come across it before.) It's hard to work to grow the category with people who don't even believe you should exist. I'll no doubt refer and link to those comments for some time. When you read them, you have to ask yourself if they're shared by those readers' coaches, the very CRCA coaches entrusted with ensuring the health and growth of women's lightweight rowing.
9 comments:
I would just like to state that this post right here is definately the setiment of the rowing team at my school. Men, women, heavyweight AND lightweight and I am glad that it has been expressed for the rowing world (or lightweight rowing world at least) to see.
I've come to think rowing is simply all about power to weight ratio (if you don't consider technique). The reason heavyweight boats are faster than lightweight boats and the heavyweight field is more competitive than the lightweight field is because it is easier to train as a heavyweight. The amount of power you can gain from adding 5 lbs of muscle will substantially increase your speed, but try gaining 5 lbs of muscle while losing 5 lbs of fat. The amount of training time needed to do this is much greater than simply adding muscle. Therefore at an elite level where everyone trains as hard as physiologically possible and relatively same amount of training time, lightweights are at a disadvantage because more training time is needed to produce the same amount of gain. Since training as a heavyweight is easier this produces faster boats AND makes it easier for more teams to be competitive.
It is easy to understand that larger lungs, longer levers, and larger muscles could create a higher potential boat speed for the larger athlete. There is bound to be some gap between heavy and lightweight rowing. It is not as much as one might think (given that even at the international level the top lightweight women's double would only be beaten by a handful heavyweight doubles) I would argue that the gap could be closed even more if the lightweight rowers were permitted to row a boat that is lighter by the same proportion that the athletes are lighter than the heavyweights. In the larger boats used on the collegiate scene those lightweights are further disadvantaged against heavyweights by the requirement of the same size coxswain. If we guess the heavyweight crew average to be 165 and the lightweight 130 then we scale the equipment appropriately... Lightweights should be permitted to row 161 lb boats (instead of FISA dictated 205) with 87 lb coxswains (instead of FISA dictated 110).
Now, take your top lightweights 8s in the country and take 67 lbs of required weight out of the boat... I bet the gap in speed closes a little bit. (then add some international recruiting, a few scholarships and a budget to match the NCAA heavyweights just for fun)
I'm pretty sure if the ltwt rowers I know have any sort of eating dissorder, its compulsive overeating. Beyond that we work just as hard as openweights and have to eat enough to have the energy to continue rowing. We may not eat heavy fried foods, but most serious openweights or any serious athlete probably wouldn't either.
Pitt rowing finally gets some recognition from their own student newspaper although all the students are gone for summer so not many students will see it.
http://media.www.pittnews.com/media/storage/paper879/news/2007/05/16/Sports/Pitt-Rowing.Team.Glides.Into.National.Spotlight-2904236.shtml
Anybody who has ever rowed knows that it would be impossible to be competitive with an eating disorder. If anything, rowing encourages healthy eating habits for heavyweights and lightweights alike - if they want to be strong and fast.
Since UCF got a NCAA bid for the at-large eights does this prevent the girls in the 1V from competing in the lightweight event at IRAs? I'd hate to not see the most competitive lightweight UCF boat possible.
As far as the NCAA is concerned, I think they only preclude rowers from racing in two championships. Since only UCF's V8 is invited, I would guess that the rowers in the 2V can race in the light eight at the IRA.
Rumor has it that UCF has implemented a new rule stating that openweights cannot "cross over" to lightweight status for IRAS anymore. They would rather the girls not focus on maintaining weight throughout the season.
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