West End Rowing Club

West End Rowing Club rows on the Whau River from its main clubhouse at Saunders Reserve in Avondale, Auckland. Founded in 1884, the club also has a boatshed on the Waikato River at Mercer and a coastal rowing clubhouse at Cox's Bay, acquired in 2022.

The club squad season runs from September to the New Zealand Rowing Championships in late February. A masters squad caters for rowers aged 27 and over, and a novice learn to row programme takes rowers aged 17 to 24. Give it a Row is a five-week adult course held on Sunday mornings. The club also races coastal rowing and beach sprints, and in 2023 it held the first Coastal Rowing Beach Sprints regatta in Auckland at St Heliers Bay.

The Avondale clubhouse has a large pontoon, a gym, an erg room, a racing fleet and changing rooms with hot showers. St Peter's College started its rowing programme at West End in 2004, and Mt Albert Grammar restarted its rowing programme there in 2010.

The club was inaugurated in May 1884 and built its first clubhouse in St Mary's Bay that December. It moved to the Whau River, and the Saunders Reserve clubrooms were opened on 28 October 2001. West End rowers have won Olympic gold, including Dudley Storey in the coxed four in 1968, Tony Hurt in the eight at Munich in 1972, and Mahe Drysdale in the single sculls at Rio in 2016.