HSE University Places Third among Russia’s Student Rowing Teams
At the end of the winter season of the Russian Student Rowing League, the men's and women's rowing teams from HSE University achieved their best results. The men's crew became the bronze medallist of the winter season, and the women were one step away from the pedestal—in fourth place.
Over the course of five years, HSE Rowing Club has become one of the leaders of the Russian Student Rowing League (SRL), the main community of student rowing teams. Towards the end of winter season in the indoor discipline, the men's team won third place, and the women's team came in fourth. Additionally, in a number of distances, HSE University students entered the top individual standings. At the very end of the winter season, news came about our rowers’ excellent results in the Moscow Student Sports Games (MSSG): the men's eight took first place, beating the SRL leaders from Moscow Aviation Institute, while the women won silver.
The Student Rowing League unites about 100 Russian universities, each with their own rowing sections and clubs. League competitions are held in summer and winter disciplines. In the summer, students compete in academic eights and fours on the best rowing canals in the country—in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, and other cities. In winter, competitions are held in the indoor discipline on specialised Concept 2 simulators. Based on competition results, the current ranking of student teams is formed.
Rowing appeared at our university in May 2019, when Anton Koshelev, a student at the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, decided to realise his dream and created a university club for this team sport. It was in the 2019–20 season that the first HSE University men’s crew took to the water in an academic eight with a coxswain. Anton’s initiative was supported by his native faculty then. In the building on Malaya Ordynka Street, the athletes equipped a small room for training; simulators and boats for competitions were purchased. The club is still located in this building, although the number of students attending the classes has grown significantly. This is where indoor training takes place on simulators.
Today, the HSE University team consists of two crews—male and female. Moreover, our university is one of the few universities in the SRL where both teams show good results. The women's eight team took to the water for the first time in 2022 and has been training intensively with the men's team ever since.
Sergey Fedorovtsev
In 2023, 2004 Olympic champion Sergey Fedorovtsev, a great role-model for students, became the coach and mentor of the HSE University team. It was under his leadership that, in less than two years, both crews improved noticeably and turned from average performers into leaders of Russian student rowing. Sergey Fedorovtsev conveys to his mentees the experience and understanding of rowing as a sport, philosophy, and way of life. 'The team is now actively growing and developing, the difficult winter season has come to an end, at the moment we are intensively preparing for the summer season and are training the crews on boat as much as possible,’ he noted.
The rowers' training programme is varied. The coaching staff is faced with the task of combining classic strength training, aerobic exercise, and speed training in a boat and on simulators. Rowing, unlike most other sports, including rowing sports, uses 95% of the muscles in the human body, so creating a balanced training plan is both a difficult and interesting task.
In addition to training on simulators, during the winter, students also train in a specialised pool in a fixed boat, practicing teamwork skills. In the summer, the team goes to the Olympic rowing canal in Krylatskoye, the mecca of Moscow rowing, where competitions of the highest level are held annually. It was this canal that hosted the starts of all rowing disciplines in 1980 during the Summer Olympic Games.
Winter and summer rowing are very different from each other. It is during competitions on real water that teamwork becomes of paramount importance.
Artem Britsyn, captain of the men’s team, first-year student of HSE University Master’s Programme in Systems Analysis and Mathematical Technologies
‘Perhaps the most difficult aspect of preparing for competitions in the summer season is staffing the “8+” crews. This is the main class in rowing, it includes eight rowers and a coxswain, which is why the coordination of all athletes becomes a decisive factor. Often, difficulties are caused by the distribution of power and roles in the boat, both from a sporting and psychological point of view, because rowing is a team sport, but therein lies its beauty!'
Team spirit is born not only in training and competitions: students organise joint holidays and get out in nature together.
The league's calendar year is structured in such a way that major competitions take place continuously throughout the year. The winter season has barely ended, and new starts are already ahead. In mid-May, the first water races will be held in Sestroretsk (Leningrad Region). ‘We worked for a long time in the winter season, honing our individual techniques. Now the task is to transfer our efforts “to the boat,” to achieve a level of team interaction that will allow us to show good results on the water,’ concluded Artem Britsyn.