CAF and USRowing are building a Para rowing development pipeline for LA 2028

Para rowing has been at the Paralympics since Beijing 2008, and the U.S. has put athletes on the water in every Games cycle since. What has been less consistent is the development structure between “someone tries rowing for the first time” and “someone makes a Paralympic team.” The Challenged Athletes Foundation and USRowing are trying to close that gap.

CAF and USRowing announced a multiyear partnership this week, framed around moving emerging Para rowers along a development track. It is the first in a planned series of CAF partnerships with National Governing Bodies. That framing is the structural part of the announcement: this is not a grant cycle. It is a bet that embedding support inside the NGB changes which athletes get found.

What the first year funds

The partnership’s stated year-one targets are grants and scholarships for 10 to 15 emerging Para rowing athletes, two development camps, and expanded national awareness of Para rowing opportunities.

Development camps are where pipeline-building happens in practice. They are where athletes who do not know Para rowing is an option get introduced to the sport, and where athletes who already row but lack access to structured coaching get in front of the people who influence selection decisions. The 10-to-15 grant number is modest. It is also deliberately aimed at emerging athletes rather than established competitors. The intent is pathway-building for LA 2028 and beyond, not supplemental support for people already in the pipeline.

Why working through USRowing is different

CAF has distributed individual athlete grants since 1994, funding competition fees, adaptive equipment, training costs, and prosthetics across dozens of sports. That model helps individual people who find their way to CAF. It does not change who finds them.

A partnership with USRowing works differently. USRowing is the national governing body for rowing in the United States. It runs the U.S. Paralympic rowing program, manages international qualification, and is the institutional actor whose decisions shape which athletes receive development resources and when. Embedding CAF’s support inside that structure means the grants connect to the coaches and selectors who run the sport, not run parallel to them.

Patrick Lawrence, CAF’s chief programs officer, said the foundation believed access to sport can transform lives and that the NGB partnership model would let CAF support athletes as they progress toward the Games and beyond. What the announcement does not specify is how athletes learn about the program in the first place. Para rowing has uneven visibility as an option, particularly for people who acquire a disability mid-life and do not have obvious entry points into adaptive sport. Two development camps in year one is a reasonable scale for a first cycle. They will not reach everyone for whom Para rowing could be a realistic path.

What this means if you row adaptively

If you row with a physical disability, or you coach adaptive rowing at a club or university program, USRowing’s Para rowing pages and CAF’s athlete services are the places to track application timelines and camp schedules. Year-one camps have not been publicly scheduled as of this announcement.

For athletes with physical disabilities who have not yet tried the sport: Para rowing categories span arm-only, trunk-and-arms, and leg-trunk-arms classifications, and the sport is open to a range of impairment types including limb difference. “Getting started” means contacting USRowing or a local rowing club about adaptive access, not waiting for a Paralympic-level program to find you.

For athletes who already row and are building toward LA 2028: this partnership adds a funded development tier that did not formally exist before. Getting into a development camp while the Games cycle is forming puts athletes in front of the right people at the right time.