What a brutal sport rowing is!
It is hard to share what we experience with others who have never sat in a boat. Each stroke is a fine balance of passion, art and science and each regatta is an Odyssey. We train like no other sport and give our entire lives as though nothing else in this world matters.
I know you must be disappointed with your result as everyone rows for Gold. Unlike other sports, we take humble pride in our wins but we must find personal meaning in our losses. It is despite our wins and losses that we need to answer the question, why do we row? My own answer spurred me on during many cold dark mornings but also guided my decision when to stop elite rowing. My answer, which I will share later, motivates me even now to pursue innovation in Rowing and keeps me tied to this sport.
It was a thrill to follow your U19 World Championship and I watched the races that I could. World Rowing owe it to everyone to show more of the races than they do. Don’t start me on this, but we need to get cameras in the boats so we can at least give others a taste of what it is like. There is some fantastic footage of NZ World’s best-time record holder Robbie Manson racing a 500m sprint. This footage goes some way to show what is possible.
I was on the train coming home from work following your Repechage live on YouTube. USA, Italy, Ukraine and Romania were charging out ahead of the field with much higher strokes per minute. The top international crews are pushing max rates out, especially the Romanians and Italians! Magnus, you simply couldn’t have done anything more. Controlling the rate, rhythm and speed comes solely down to the stroke and coxswain. You knew what was required from your seat and you delivered – you can hold your head up high.
In an eight, the perfect race comes down to the collective motion of an expansive network – where all the strengths and weaknesses, rights and wrongs, goods and ills are averaged out. Your resulting speed is not a reflection of any one individual athlete but the sum of all decisions from the CEO, management, coaching staff and equipment selection, down to that extra piece of toast the bowman had for breakfast or the timing of a coxswains call. An eights race is a race of institutions. It is wonderful to know that you and your crew represented the top of U19 rowing in Australia. Rowing Australia are investing in future results not so much concerned with the present. I believe that it would serve a problem if you had achieved Gold for it is extremely difficult to hold peak performance two or six years out from the Olympics. It was important to get you and your crew onto the world stage. You will take this experience with you into your next race and the next. One race will be built upon another and soon you’ll be competing for Olympic qualification be that Paris or LA? This was not the race that you needed to win, you just needed to be in that boat!
As you know I was also closely watching Isaiah Harrison, who has been racing with foils. Last year in the U19, his strategy was to win every heat, semi and final, which unfortunately exhausted Isaiah before the final but also fuelled the will of Isaiah’s competition. Everyone loves to hate Americans! He achieved a well-fought bronze and he went away with a great experience and lessons learnt. I was speaking to Isaiah’s father/coach last night and he said that this year, Isaiah aimed at a smart progression from one race to the next. It was only in the final that he unleashed his speed and rowed a fantastic race, rowing over the reigning champion Emil Neykov and was only beaten by a well-seasoned German sculler Jonas Gelsen. Isaiah should be racing U19 but needed the experience of higher competition. We are now looking at Isaiah’s oar ratios so he can rate a little higher, something closer to his C2 machine work of 35 spm. At one point in the final, he was down to 29 spm! Yet the data on the screen was showing he was the fastest boat, lowest rating but the highest metres per stroke. We learnt some important lessons from Isaiah’s U23 campaign as we look to optimise his oars and rigging for Olympic qualifying next year. If he had won, it would have put us in a difficult position as we wouldn’t know what to work on. Winning can leave you with a false sense of security, unsure of what to focus on next. So Silver for the USA was a great outcome!
Why do I row? I row because it is a transcendental experience. Rowing is beauty. Our entire being rests upon a magical silvery surface between the heavens and the earth in order to contest a race with those who apply their entire mind and body to swift and delicate motion. My entire body sings when I travel across the water’s surface motioning ever forward into the future but always looking back from where I have been.
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