Does anybody ACTUALLY care about coastal rowing?
I might be making a mountain out of a molehill - haven't been following rowing for very long - but I see SIGNIFICANTLY more media coverage/emphasis put on coastal/beach sprint rowing than "actual" flat-water racing and I'm curious how much of the larger community actually follows or cares about it or if this is USRowing funding the bourgeoisie's cash-cow for yet another hard to enter sport to keep rowing gatekept.
From my viewpoint it's more of a spectacle than anything that gives people the wrong idea of what rowing is that's more dependent on technique than fitness which has me like why even bother? Sure it's impressive, but I have a million times more respect for a middling unset college 8 of novices flying down the course than some dude running on a beach to get into a bathtub single.
Forgive me for being a little stupid, a little biased and passionate, but watched a similar thing happen with water polo and their clusterf*ck of a national (southern california) league.