Volker Nolte on Sliding Riggers

[rcaroe]

I just interviewed Volker Nolte for the RowingChat podcast and he talked about his PhD thesis on the most efficient rowing stroke. This led directly to the development of the sliding rigger (and its subsequent ban from FISA regattas). It's an interesting story encompassing FISA's attitude to new tech which Volker expands on when talking about the Olympics and the future of rowing later on.
https://rowing.chat/volker-nolte/

[Mango]

I just interviewed Volker Nolte for the RowingChat podcast and he talked about his PhD thesis on the most efficient rowing stroke. This led directly to the development of the sliding rigger (and its subsequent ban from FISA regattas). It's an interesting story encompassing FISA's attitude to new tech which Volker expands on when talking about the Olympics and the future of rowing later on.
https://rowing.chat/volker-nolte/

I am not sure Volker is the first to come up with the sliding rigger. He may be the first to try and employ it at a large scale. When I first entered the sport in 2001, my dad (an engineer) was at the boathouse for literally about 10 minutes and looked at my coach and said, "why don't you guys have sliding riggers instead of sliding seats?" We were never a rowing family, I was the first to enter the sport. So if a random civil engineer can walk into a boathouse and see the solution, I doubt that the knowledge of physics has changed. It isn't an advancement of materials like say, running shoes. The issue is this is a niche sport without a ton of money (in the grand scheme of sports). RD is expensive for relatively minimal output ($$$), so every boat builder will wait for the other to make the investment, and they will just improve on it.

[rowing]

https://heartheboatsing.com/2017/10/17/ ... ng-rigger/