Effect of Oar Design on the Efficiency of the Rowing Stroke

The rowing oar remained basically unchanged in form from the Seventeenth century to the mid twentieth century, with a broader, flattened blade at the end of a narrow shaft, as shown in Figure 1(a). The introduction of the tulip shaped macon oar in the 1950s was the first universally accepted change to the design, and this type of oar was prevalent until the introduction of the “big blade”, first introduced by the Dreissigacker brothers (Concept 2, Vermont) in late 1991. (Miller, 2000).