Tactics in middle distance running events can be represented by split times during races (Brown, 2005). The purpose of the current research was to apply this approach to 2000m indoor rowing. The 500m spit times for athletes who competed in the 2010 British Indoor Rowing Championships are available on the championship web site (http://concept2.co.uk/birc/results?year=2010). These split times were converted into percentages of each athlete`s finishing time so that strategy could be considered in a way that accounted for differing ability levels. Data for the 125 finishers in the men`s and women`s open lightweight and heavyweight categories were entered into SPSS version 18 (SPSS: An IBM Company, Armonk, NY). Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests revealed the split times for the first three 500m sections were not normally distributed (p < 0.012). Therefore, nonparametric statistical tests were used to compare the four groups. A series of Kruskal-Wallis H tests revealed no significant differences between the 4 groups for any of the four 500m splits (p > 0.056). A cluster analysis revealed two dominant clusters of performance and two other clusters as shown in Table 1. The males were distributed 52 in Cluster 1, 33 in Cluster 2, 8 in Cluster 3 and 2 in Cluster 4. The females were distributed 14 in Cluster 1, 12 in Cluster 2, 3 in Cluster 3 and 0 in Cluster 4. There was no significant association between gender an22 = 0.521, p = 0.771). The data show that different strategies are adopted by rowers but that there are no gender differences in strategy adopted. A limitation of the study is that observed split times may result from factors such as fatigue or loss of motivation in some cases rather than strategic decisions made by rowers.
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