Sykes Racing boasts an impressive list of world first innovations which have pushed Sykes boats to the forefront of our industry

The first ever Sykes boat that was sent overseas was used by Paul Guest and David Ramage at the 1968 Mexico Olympics and the Australian Men’s Lightweight Four used a Sykes purpose built four to win the 1974 World Championships (incidentally both these boats are still around and in good nick today). Since then over 500 Sykes boats have found new homes overseas.

Given that it was in 1966 when Jeff Sykes first designed a racing scull that would assist him in his desire to win an Australian Sculling Championship, Sykes boats quickly attracted the attention of discerning customers overseas and today, 43 years on, we still share Jeff’s passion and desire to be the best at what we do exporting many of our boats around the world each year.

While our early export successes were in Japan, today the USA is our major export market with a full time agent devoted to the sales, service and repair of Sykes boats. Other boats go to New Zealand, Asia and Europe and all up about 25% of our annual production goes overseas.

We have always adopted (and will continue to), the principle of Australia and Australian customers first, never wanting to “bite off more than we could chew” and concentrating on what our Australian customers needed. Sometimes that meant knocking back orders from overseas. Our move to our new premises last year was in part to provide for the increased growth in our export business so that we can grow our business and bring the benefits of scale to the Australian Rowing community without sacrificing our sales and service to Australia. More Sykes boats overseas will help us develop even better products for the Australian Rowing Community.