Rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympics

Rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympics took place at the Regattabahn in the Grünau municipality of Berlin. The 1936 program remained that same as it had been since 1924 and would continue to be until 1976, when the program was expanded to include women. With the exception of the inaugural edition at the 1900 Summer Olympics, this was the first time that the United States had competed in rowing and not come out on top of the medal table. Instead, Germany dominated the field by winning five of the seven events and taking silver and bronze in the others. Only the British duo of Dick Southwood and Jack Beresford, Jr. and the American men’s eights crew (represented by the University of Washington) were able to steal victories from the host nation.

Two countries, Yugoslavia and Estonia, sent rowers to the Olympics for the first time, with Elmar Korko in the single sculls being the latter’s lone rowing representative. Argentina won its first rowing medal at the hands of Julio Curatella and Horacio Podestá in the coxless pairs. France’s Noël Vandernotte, only 12 years old, won bronze medals in the coxed pairs and the coxed fours. Switzerland’s Hermann Betschart, Alex and Hans Homberger, and Karl Schmid competed in the coxed and coxless fours and the coxed eights and, while this netted them a bronze and silver medal each, their exhaustion probably cost them a better medal in the coxless fours and a podium finish in the eights.