More than 300 participants in almost 80 teams were at the start of Rowing Against Cancer on Saturday, September 9, 2023. For the 12th time, the Foundation Living with Cancer, the Rowing Society Heidelberg 1898 (RGH) and the NCT Heidelberg organized the charity regatta. In bright sunshine, it was not so much about top sporting performances, but primarily about the good cause: to make exercise visible as a contribution in the fight against cancer and to collect donations for sports and exercise offers for cancer patients of the NCT Heidelberg. Both were successful - on the one hand, the regatta village was very well attended with many information and participation booths, and on the other hand, 90,000 euros in donations were collected.
Even if it wasn't primarily about top sporting performances, the participants in four-man boats put their backs into it and offered the spectators exciting competitions - and sometimes also interesting and creative rowing techniques. Joachim Wiskemann, head of the Oncological Sports and Exercise Therapy working group at the NCT Heidelberg and Heidelberg University Hospital (UKHD) and organizer said, "This is not about great rowing experience, we deliberately want a event where everyone can take part and get involved in the good cause. In addition to the rowing teams, I would also like to thank the 150 helpers, who make such a successful event possible."
In 52 races, the winning teams in five classes were determined via prelimanary heats, heats of hope and finals: PROGENs Flotte (Progen Biotechnik GmbH) came out on top in the women's class, while Team Piri-Piri (Nexus/Chili GmbH) won the men's class. The company also provided the winning boat in the mixed class (two women/two men) with Team Chunked Encoding. In the mixed women's class (three women/one man) the team Flinke Flosse (SRH Schulen GmbH) took the victory and in the mixed men's class (one woman/three men) the Office Tornadoes (Accenture GmbH) crossed the finish line first.
Out of competition, patron and MLP founder Manfred Lautenschläger competed, supported by Jürgen Debus, Medical Director of the Clinic for Radiology and Radiotherapy at the UKHD, Dirk Jäger, Managing Director at the NCT Heidelberg and Head of Medical Oncology at the UKHD, and Andreas Kulozik, Director of Clinical Pediatric Oncology at the Hopp Children's Tumor Center Heidelberg. The foursome raced against a selection of female athletes from Team Paris of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region. In addition to track and field athlete Hannah Mergenthaler and boxers Irina Schönberger and Asya Ari, rower Antonia Nake of RGH was also on board. But even the newly crowned junior world champion could not do anything against the many years of rowing experience of her opponents - and so the athletes had to admit defeat in the end.