Celebrities pull out all the stops against Olympic champion
April 4, 2006
To celebrate the 152nd Boat Race on Sunday, double Olympic gold medal winner James Cracknell battled it out with a team of sporting heroes on the Concept 2 Indoor Rower. The four sport stars challenging Cracknell over 2,000m - the Olympic regatta distance - on Concept 2 Indoor Rowers were all ITV sports pundits and consisted of former boxing world champions Barry McGuigan and Duke McKenzie, former Wimbledon and Jamaican footballer Robbie Earle and former McLaren Formula 1 driver Mark Blundell.
The aim of the race, which was broadcast as part of ITV's build up to the Boat Race, was to illustrate the extreme levels of fitness and training that are required to become a rower at the highest level.
Not surprisingly rowing legend James Cracknell, who has just completed a cross-Atlantic rowing voyage, comfortably won the race. However, the battle for second and third places was a hard fought affair as boxings Barry McGuigan pushed football's Robbie Earle right to the line before Mark Blundell and Duke McKenzie brought up the rear.
Concept 2's Marketing Manager, John Wilson who is a former Boat Race coach for both Oxford and Cambridge, commented: The celebrity boat race highlighted just how addictive indoor rowing can be.
"It started off as a light-hearted race against James Cracknell but there was a real fight to the end between Barry McGuigan and Robbie Earle. They really pushed themselves to the limit as the machine brought out their deeply engrained competitive spirit."
Concept 2 is the world's leading manufacturer of rowing machines and has been producing the Concept 2 Indoor Rower for 25 years. The Indoor Rower can now be found in more than 80% of health clubs and gyms across the UK and is used by a wide cross-section of sportsmen and women from F1 drivers to triathletes.
The Indoor Rower is also popular with the home market as the PM3 monitor allows you to save your times and race against yourself eliminating the need for a training partner.
Indoor rowing as a sport is growing in popularity year on year and much of this growth is attributed to the many regional, national and international indoor rowing championships that take place each year.
The finishing times for the celebrity rowers for the 2,000m race were:
James Cracknell 6:21.4
Robbie Earl 7:05.7
Barry McGuigan 7:10.3
Mark Blundell 8:04.0
Duke McKenzie 8:31.3
Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.
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