Rowing: Silver belles help to banish post-Waddell depression

By CHRIS BARCLAY

New Zealand's women rowers shook off any post-Waddell depression in the sport with a promising performance at the world championships at Switzerland in August.

Rotsee Lake in Lucerne could well prove a watershed for New Zealand's women, who teamed up in various guises to scoop three silver medals.

Twins Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell were runners-up in the double sculls to Germany and made up half of the silver-medal winning quad with Olympian Sonia Waddell and Paula Twining.

The coxless four of Jackie Abraham, Kate Robinson, Rochelle Saunders and Nicky Coles also pushed Australia hard to finish second.

Losing the "freakish" Rob Waddell, New Zealand's only gold medallist at the Sydney Olympics, galvanised head coach Dick Tonks, who late November also had to contend with Sonia Waddell's decision to take a year off.

Like her husband she intends to be back for Athens in 2004 but meantime Tonks says the sport needs to focus on developing new champions.

"There are others out there, we've just got to find them ... We've got our eye on a couple of people we're hopeful for.

"They have either got it or they haven't. We can help them improve and develop what they have got to their full potential, but we can't create what isn't there."

Aside from the performance at Lucerne, there were also plenty of positive results in the junior ranks.

The national development squad snared seven medals at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in St Catharines, Canada in August.

Emily Liddell and Angela Fife plus Melanie Burke and Alicia Forbes won gold medals in their pairs races.

Andrea Rix-Trott was a strong second in the under-23 single sculls while the men's eight finished third behind two United States development crews in the senior race.

Rowing also found an ally in New Zealand's richest man, Douglas Myers, who has invested in the future of the sport, forming an academy to nurture up-and-coming rowers.

Each year, three Auckland region students will receive study grants, coaching and training support, use of Auckland Rowing Club facilities and gym membership - worth about $5000 a year - for three years.

Without the dominant figure of Waddell looming over the national championships at Lake Ruataniwha in March, Auckland's Steve Westlake replaced the Olympic and world champion as the national single sculls titleholder.

Although Waddell is anchored in the Team NZ headquarters on the Auckland waterfront, the double world and Olympic champion was named rower of the year.

The women's single sculls title also changed hands when New Zealand female rower of the year Caroline Evers-Swindell beat four-time titleholder Sonia Waddell.

Attention turned to the more unpredictable waters of the Atlantic in October when two New Zealand crews undertook the masochistic 4667km ocean crossing from the Canary Islands to Barbados.

Westlake and fellow policeman Matt Goodman took line honours, emulating the 1997 efforts of fellow New Zealanders Rob Hamill and the late Phil Stubbs, the race record holders.

Westlake and Goodman won in 42 days 2 hours 19 minutes - outside the record 41 days 2 hours 55 minutes.

Hamill was a late withdrawal after he broke a knuckle in his right hand intervening in a domestic dispute in Tenerife.

New Zealand provided the only female entrants in the original 36-crew field, with Steph Brown and Jude Ellis trumping many of their male counterparts to finish fourth, nine days behind the winners.

The death of coaching icon Harry Mahon, who lost a long battle with bowel cancer in May, was a blemish on an otherwise positive year.

The 59-year-old was lost to New Zealand rowing in the last years of his life - guiding the British eight to gold at Sydney in his last major assignment.

Mahon, who was not expected to live long enough to see Sydney, said the gold made up for the disappointment at Los Angeles 16 years ago when the New Zealand eight finished an agonising fourth.

Rowing New Zealand spokesman Mike Stanley said: "It's a tribute to his tenacity and love of what he was doing that he held on for so long."

- NZPA