Rowing at the 1976 Summer Olympics

Rowing at the 1976 Summer Olympics was held in the newly-constructed Olympic Basin on the Île Notre-Dame, itself an artificial entity created for Expo 67, the Canadian centennial celebration, out of rock cleared for the Montreal Metro. The Montreal Games hosted women’s rowing events for the first time and sixteen nations sent women to take part in six events: single, double, and coxed quadruple sculls, coxless pairs, and coxed fours and eights. The men’s program expanded as well, adding the (coxless) quadruple sculls for the first time. East Germany topped the medal table for the third consecutive time and won a medal in every event for the second time in a row, taking five of the eight men’s events and four of the six women’s competitions. The only other nation to capture more than one gold medal was Bulgaria, who won the women’s events that the East Germans did not, a feat that was made all the more impressive by the fact that the nation had never previously won an Olympic rowing medal. Norway, meanwhile, earned its first-ever Olympic rowing title when brothers Frank and Alf Hansen won the double sculls event.