{"id":1371,"date":"2025-03-10T11:06:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T11:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/?p=1371"},"modified":"2025-05-20T09:28:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T09:28:22","slug":"team-row4cancer-winners-of-the-worlds-toughest-rowing-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/2025\/03\/10\/team-row4cancer-winners-of-the-worlds-toughest-rowing-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Row4Cancer \u2013 winners of the world\u2019s toughest rowing race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University offers its congratulations to\u00a0Team Row4Cancer<\/a>, winners of the\u00a0World\u2019s Toughest Row 2024<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a 3000-mile race across the Atlantic from Spain to Antigua.<\/p>\n

After 37 days, 13 hours and 20 minutes at sea \u2013 a new world record almost two days ahead of the second placed crew\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 the four-man Dutch team arrived at Nelson\u2019s Dockyard on 17 January, having produced an estimated 1.5 million oar strokes, with the individual members burning in excess of 5000 calories per day. See the team celebrate and in action\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To prepare for this extreme endurance challenge, Mark Slats, Leon Koning, Maarten Diepeveen and<\/span>\u00a0Tom Rijnders worked with performance experts in\u00a0Sport, Exercise, and Rehabilitation Sciences<\/a>\u00a0for almost a year to ensure they were ready.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Working with Team Row4Cancer were:\u00a0Professor John Dickinson<\/a>, Head of the Exercise Respiratory Clinic who has also worked with the likes of the England football team and GB Swimmers;\u00a0Professor James Hopker<\/a>, a world-leading expert on the optimisation of the exercise training process who also regularly provides scientific advice to athletes from amateur to professional level in cycling, triathlon, athletics and football;\u00a0Dr Megan Judge<\/a>, an expert on endurance performance; and\u00a0Alastair Thrush<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Harry Rogers,<\/a>\u00a0who are both experts in Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation, providing input on strength and injury prevention.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Working alongside them was\u00a0Dr Borja Martinez-Gonzalez<\/a>\u00a0(now with\u00a0Kent and Medway Medical School<\/a>), an expert in the field of physical and cognitive testing, with a focus on strategies to improve endurance performance and resistance to fatigue.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Dickinson said: \u2018On behalf of my colleagues here at the University, I would like to offer our congratulations to Mark, Leon, Maarten and Tom on their performance and achievement. To beat the second-place team by almost two days is astounding.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Due to the extreme and unique nature of their challenge, we helped the team understand their physical strengths and weaknesses. Once this was established we could provide a clear focus to training.\u00a0<\/span>Dr<\/span>\u00a0Borja Martinez would<\/span>\u00a0monitor<\/span>\u00a0training on a weekly basis an<\/span>d\u00a0<\/span>we could test<\/span>\u00a0the impact of their training<\/span>\u00a0on their fitness<\/span>\u00a0when they came back onto<\/span>\u00a0the the Canterbury\u00a0<\/span>campus every three months in the build-up to the race. This\u00a0<\/span>process\u00a0<\/span>help<\/span>ed<\/span>\u00a0the team see how impactful their training was, and developed\u00a0<\/span>their\u00a0<\/span>confidence in their ability to complete the challenge successfully.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, part of Kent\u2019s\u00a0School of Natural Sciences<\/a>, has a wide range of\u00a0custom-built facilities<\/a>, developed to support the content of its degree programmes. Many of these are open to the public and run by students with staff support, providing under- and post-graduates with the opportunity to work on real-life cases using world-class equipment and implementing the latest ideas.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Its\u00a0<\/span>Performance<\/span><\/a>,\u202f<\/span>Sports Ready<\/span><\/a>, and\u202f<\/span>Respiratory clinics<\/span><\/a>\u202fhouse diagnostic equipment alongside treatment facilities for sports therapy, sports massage and injury prevention, including equipment for brain and muscle stimulation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Team Row4Cancer\u2019s chosen charity for the challenge was the\u00a0Princess M\u00e1xima Center<\/a>, a Netherlands-based facility for children with cancer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University offers its congratulations to\u00a0Team Row4Cancer, winners of the\u00a0World\u2019s Toughest Row 2024\u00a0\u2013 a 3000-mile race across the Atlantic from Spain to Antigua. After 37 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37654,"featured_media":1372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[137637,137665,137650,28766,91617,1],"tags":[120520,13897,263930,137638,127013],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/unikentsportsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}