Etes-vous pret? Partez! – The Late Start of Women Rowers

The aim of our study is to show the development of women's rowing and competition, as well as the reasons for its slow spread, taking into account the so called decisive era, the social environment, which, although in various ways, has greatly influenced it all over the world. One of the major research methods for collecting data was document analysis: we used the volumes of Gusztáv Götz's legacy¹found in the sports history collection of the Hungarian Rowing Federation, whose spirit we also tried to preserve. In these volumes we found and analysed congressional reports, resolutions made by the national rowing federations, professional articles on rowing and papers on sports medicine. In addition, we studied the relevant literature, namely, studies dealing with the era from sociological, sports sociological and sports historical perspectives. Moreover, via membership in the Traditionalist Committee of the Hungarian Rowing Federation we had the opportunity to meet the great Hungarian female rowing champions of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and we prepared structured in-depth interviews with them. Meeting most often with Anna Domonkos¹, Ágnes Bán¹, Zsuzsanna Rakitay¹. The results show that the international rowing society was divided, the social and medical discourse differed from each other in the assessment of women's sports, sports historical traditions varied country by country and international sports politics also played a decisive role in the delay. With the results, our paper is intended to give a more thorough picture of the reasons why women's competition in rowing has expanded so slowly than the previous analyses did.