Image Credit: World Rowing
For the Australian Rowing Team, the 2024 Paris Olympic Games were a bitter disappointment. The culmination of a truncated Olympic cycle that followed our second-best games in Tokyo was the worst medal haul for Australia in 26 years. Australian Rowing is in a very different place than in 1988, when we only sent four crews to the Seoul games. The sport as a whole is much larger; you only have to look at the year-on-year growth of the national championships to see that. We’ve enjoyed much more success, too, having picked up ten Olympic gold medals across the nine Games since then. It’s much better funded too, enjoying the support of Hancock Prospecting in supporting our Olympic hopefuls since 2017.
Whilst I’m not in the position to assert what exactly went wrong, there’s certainly some meaningful reflections to be made on the Rowsellas performances, and what’s to come for the next Olympiad.
The first point that bears mentioning is the highly publicised selection decisions to chase gold medals in the men’s and women’s eights, something that all in the Australian rowing community would love to see happen—given that it has never been achieved before.
In hindsight – and much to the delight of the mainstream media covering the games – this was a mistake. Looking back to the 2023 World Rowing Championships, where both men’s and women’s eights achieved bronze alongside a fifth-placed finish in the coxless fours, it’s easy to see how this was always a monumental risk. If it had paid off, rowing would have been crowned the success story of Australia’s best-ever Games, but unfortunately, it didn’t, and it will now take some time to rebuild.
I feel as though the eights will need at least an entire Olympic cycle of priority—not a last-minute dash—to gain the race experience required to succeed at the pinnacle of our sport.
The second point worth discussing is the one that most often crops up in discussions about our Rowsellas, and that’s the centralised National Training Centre (NTC) training model. Since 2017, Rowing Australia has been supported by Hancock Prospecting, allowing the top athletes in the nation to relocate to dedicated facilities in Penrith (Women) and Canberra (Men), in order to train full-time.
The centres offer incredible opportunities to the athletes that train there, but they certainly have not been for everyone. There has been a sharp drop-off from U23 to senior level over the past eight years, with only a handful of Australian medallists at the U23 World Rowing Championships from 2017-2019 featuring at the National Training Centres.
Whilst the women’s centre has gained several U23 medallists over the past eight years, the men’s centre is different. The world champion U23 coxless four from 2017 have all left the sport, as have half of the winning coxed four from 2019.  Now, I am unable to point to any specific reason for this attrition, and every athlete has their situation, but the numbers don’t paint an inspiring picture. When you consider that the 2024 Games was the first time since 1980 that Australia did not qualify a men’s sculling boat, it’s clear that this drop-off has been a factor.
It is worth comparing to Great Britain, which can retain an impressive percentage of its U23 squads and has converted its recent intermediate success into a dominant showing at the Paris Games.
Whilst speaking of U23 success, Australia has seen much more of it in the past few years than can be said of decades gone by. Of the 28 crews selected in the category this Olympiad, only four have missed out on an A-final race, with 13 bringing home medals. Compared to the eight medals won in the lead-up to Tokyo, this bodes well for the future. Of particular note are the US-based athletes, who have won medals at each of the championships since Tokyo.
The shortened cycle saw many senior athletes extend their careers in the sport, so this recent success bodes well for an Olympiad in which we’re likely to see more of our Olympians hang up the oars than usual.
The challenge here will lie in ensuring that this talent is retained. It is good to see Rowing Australia deploying an ‘Australia A’ group to World Rowing Cup Oneand Shanghai at the end of September. This group consists of Athletes who have come through U23s just too late to progress to the NTCs for Paris, and it should help stem the tide of athletes leaving before their peak.
At risk of comparing to Great Britain at every turn, their ‘Project Paris’ campaign of the past four years has done well to produce several Olympic medallists, turning around the nation’s disappointment of the Tokyo Games.
Rowing Australia this week announced new Head Coaches at each of the NTC’s. Two-time Olympic silver-winning coach James Harris from Great Britain will take the helm of the women’s centre in Penrith, whilst Australian Olympic Gold and Silver medal-winning coach Chris O’Brien will lead the men in Canberra. These appointments signal a decisive action from RA and must be applauded. The appointment of two figureheads for whom this will be their first head coach position leads one to believe that Rowing Australia wishes to be more directly involved in the direction each takes in building their respective programs.
On the women’s side, Harris has a core group of athletes who built nicely throughout the cycle but were unfortunately unable to convert at the final hurdle. The NTC can be argued to be a resounding success for women’s rowing in Australia, and so his job will be to carry that momentum forward to Los Angeles. If each women’s boat improved by just one place, 50% of the squad would be Olympic medallists rather than the 9% of Paris.
For the men, the job certainly looks trickier. Speaking to athletes who have been on the fringes of the squad, it seems that a lot of trust will need to be rebuilt in the system. In 2017, it was radically different to what Australia had seen before; the ‘First XV’ as they were then bought in and reaped the rewards. The athletes are certainly capable enough, but will they have the faith that the NTC can produce the success it did in the Tokyo Olympiad?
Australian Rowing has been on a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the past two Olympiads. Whilst different elements of the performance pathway have peaked at different times, we’ve seen tremendous growth domestically. The foundations are certainly well-laid, and the future has the potential to be exceedingly bright at the top end. I can’t wait to see what is in store for the next four years.
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