A year is a long time, and especially so in the rapidly evolving world of beach sprint. To wait a full 12 months, from world championship to world championship, to find out who might be the best of the best feels interminable. So to fill the two-and-a-half month gap from now until Qingdao 2026, Wild Rowing is launching its own Beach Sprint World Rankings.
The top story is that in the inaugural rankings, last year’s silver medalists in both the men’s and women’s solos, Spain’s Ander Martín and Austria’s Magdalena Lobnig, come top. While in the mixed double rankings, the Lithuanian duo of Dominykas Jancionis and Martyna Kazlauskaite, two-time world champions, hold a dominant lead.
This first set of rankings is based on results starting from, and including, last year’s world championship, while future rankings will include results over the previous year. The idea is to assign points values to each major regatta—world championships are worth 1,000 points, continental championships are worth 600, and the value of other regattas depends on the international participation—and award a percentage of these points according to a rower’s finishing position (even athletes who are knocked out in the time trial gain points, because we want to promote participation). The algorithm then counts an athlete’s top five finishes, by points value, over the season.
In the women’s solo, world champion Emma Twigg is down at fourth because she hasn’t competed internationally since Antalya 2025, and so hasn’t picked up additional points. Still, we might not want to bet against her once she returns from her recent injury. In contrast, Asian champion Parisa Chaempudsa, who has never competed at worlds, is up in sixth place in the women’s solo, in large part because of how highly valued continental championships are in the calculation. We don’t consider this a mistake because national fans want to see their athletes competing in continental regattas—fans want to see rowers competing more, not less—and, of course, because those continental races will soon decide who gets to go to the Olympics.
Chris Bak is up at third place in both the men’s single and the mixed double, despite the fact that we believe we’re undercounting his total points (more on this below). Bak is clearly one of the top favorites to represent the USA at LA28, where rowers will compete in both disciplines. And the strength of the Lithuanian team shines through in the mixed double, with two men and two women ranked in the top five. The reigning world champions are surely kept honest at home by rivals Zygimantas Galisanskis and Raminta Morkunaite. (Note that the double rankings are calculated separately for men and women, and don’t depend on a rower’s teammate.)
Before going overly deep into the exact position of each rower in the rankings, there are a couple of big caveats to mention. The first is that these rankings are based on available data, and with no central source of results in the beach sprint world, that data can be hard to find, and in some cases incorrect.
The biggest error we’ve discovered so far is a big one, though it is far enough back that it doesn’t affect our rankings. World Rowing’s interactive statistics system names Italian Federico Garibaldi as the 2021 world champion, but the PDF entry list for that year has Giovanni Ficarra racing for Italy in the men’s solo. We believe Ficarra was the real champion.
The biggest omission, one which does affect our rankings, is that the full results for the 2026 Americas Beach Sprint Championships don’t appear to be available online. The lack of data from this continental championship means that we’re almost certainly undercounting the ranking points of rowers from the Americas region, including current world champion Chris Bak. There are other key regattas not included, too. You can see the full list of those that are so far being counted at the bottom of our Beach Sprint World Rankings page. (As new results come in, we’ll try to update the data.)
The other caveat is that these rankings almost certainly won’t predict the result of the world championships. But they’re not really supposed to; these rankings aren’t a detailed statistical analysis. Instead the aim is to highlight and reward the rowers with greater participation and results in the emerging circuit of international and open beach sprint regattas. (The message for anyone upset by their position is this: race more, place higher and make sure we have the results.)
Just this year, the final stage of the Filippi Trophy and the 1924 Pharoes Trophy rivalled the total participation we might expect in worlds. And while the number of national teams at both those open regattas was only a third of what it will be in Qingdao, they gave fans on the beach and at home an early preview of the year’s biggest race. We need more of these regattas.
Within the beach sprint world, people have frequently raised the idea of creating some sort of organized racing circuit. Something a little bit like the Filippi Trophy series, but spread across more countries and open to more boat manufacturers. Or perhaps even more akin to cycling’s UCI WorldTour or motor racing’s FIA Formula One World Championship, with teams composed of top rowers from across the world, supported by different manufacturers and racing worldwide. For a sport that emerged from nothing a little over a decade ago and that will reach the echelon of world sport, the Olympics, two years from now, perhaps nothing is impossible. But in the meantime, we give you the Wild Rowing Beach Sprint World Rankings.
You can find more information, including how points are assigned and which regattas are included, on our Beach Sprint World Rankings page. And you can contact us with any ideas or suggestions as to how to improve them.