With the National Rowing Championships starting on the 19th February at Lake Karapiro the clubs are putting the final training in place for their chance to take on the best New Zealand has to offer.
Entries for the regatta are slightly down from the 2006 figures with:
| 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | |
| Number of Rowers | 725 | 722 | 846 |
| Males | 384 | 353 | 474 |
| Females | 340 | 368 | 372 |
| Coxswains | 67 | 68 | 94 |
| Number of Seats | 1949 | 1934 | 2255 |
As always there will be intense interest in the Championship Events not the least of those will be the Mens Single Scull on saturday afternoon. However if some of the lead up regattas are any indication there will be strong competition in the Club, Senior and Novice areas as well.
There is a good deal of disappointment in the entry numbers for a lot of the events, in particular when the so called flagship event, the Boss Rooster, can only attract one legal entry at the close of entries. If there was a policy of scraping all events which fail to attract more than 3 entries in consecutive years then a number of our Championship events would be lost, including the Boss Rooster.
Hopefully the weather will be as good as that pictured in the banner above