The Most Competitive Events at the Rowing World Championships…
With just under 500 of the brightest and best rowing fans making predictions for the 2025 World Championships, we've analyzed the data to identify which events will provide the most thrilling competition.
Using a custom competitiveness score, we’re predicting which events will have multiple crews genuinely battling for medals.
How We Measure Competitiveness
We’ve dreamed up a super fancy competitiveness score combines two key factors:
The Gap: How close are the top contenders? Smaller gaps between 1st and 2nd place indicate tighter competition
Depth of Field: How many crews have meaningful support (>5%) from predictors?
This gives higher scores to events where multiple crews have realistic medal chances, rather than runaway favorites.
The Most Competitive Events to Watch
Here’s our ranking of the events that will provide the most explosive and unpredictable racing at the 2025 World Rowing Championships.
🥇 Men's Pair (Competitiveness: 56.42)
The Event of the Championships?
Romania leads with just 26.4% support
Great Britain close behind at 20.5% (gap: only 5.9%)
6 crews with meaningful support make this wiiiiiiiiide open (as the heats have already shown)
Crews to Watch: Romania and Great Britain are neck-and-neck, but don't count out anyone with New Zealand, Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland all on over 5%.
🥈 Mixed Double (Competitiveness: 52.34)
A new event this year, the mixed doubles has no history to draw upon so research has not been easy. For the experienced players it will have involved a deep dive into the names of crew members…
Netherlands leads at 38.9%
Ireland in striking distance at 14.3%
Multiple crews within striking distance
Crews to Watch: While Netherlands has the edge, Ireland's strong rowing tradition makes them dangerous. But keep an eye on emerging nations looking to make their mark in this new event.
🥉 Women's Double (Competitiveness: 47.01)
Asian vs European Showdown. The Dutch have been a real force in rowing recently but host nation China will be keen to put on a good show.
Netherlands at 25.0%
People's Republic of China breathing down their necks at 21.8% (and on their home water!!!)
Only a 3.2% gap separating the leaders!
Crews to watch: This could go either way between Netherlands and China. Romania, Great Britain and Greece also have dark horse potential.
Other Events to Watch:
Men's Double
Leader: New Zealand - 27.0%
Second: Ireland - 25.8% (Gap: 1.2%) - The Tightest Gap! of all events!
Crews competing: 20, Competitiveness: 45.61
Lightweight Women's Single Scull
Leader: Greece - 33.0%
Second: Netherlands - 16.3% (Gap: 16.6%)
Crews competing: 20, Competitiveness: 45.37
PR2 Mixed Double
Leader: Germany - 29.3%
Second: People's Republic of China - 26.5% (Gap: 2.8%)
Crews competing: 10, Competitiveness: 45.06
Mixed Eight
Leader: United States of America - 35.1%
Second: Netherlands - 27.4% (Gap: 7.7%)
Crews competing: 10, Competitiveness: 43.82
Lightweight Men's Single Scull
Leader: Ireland - 44.4%
Second: Germany - 22.4% (Gap: 22.1%)
Crews competing: 16, Competitiveness: 42.01
Why These Races Matter? 🧐
True uncertainty - no overwhelming favourites.
Multiple medal contenders - several crews with realistic chances.
Potential upsets - smaller nations can challenge traditional powers.
Edge-of-your-seat racing - the closest margins in the sport.
But most importantly - they affect the game!
In Fantasy Rowing, when everyone backs the favourite, everyone moves together on the leaderboard.
But when everyone picks a different crew it really raises the stakes in those events and it’s in these events that the cream will rise to the top of the table.
They’re also the races to make time to watch - at the time of writing this the Men’s Pairs heats have already taken place and Heat 2 had just 0.69s between 1st and 3rd!!!
Want to see more data?
All of the prediction data is available within the app which you can download here:
Coming next: Who are the runaway favourites?
Data based on 482 fantasy predictions for the 2025 World Rowing Championships. Competitiveness scores calculated using gap analysis and field depth metrics.
