Rowing: Striving for that golden formula

The victorious New Zealand coxed four in 1968.

Watch this weekend's world championship finals and the ease with which crews of men and women glide through the water on the Eton course.

Study the synchronisity they achieve, these groups of two, four and eight rowers.

Apart from an appreciation of the hours upon hours of training and the thousands of kilometres churned out on the Lake Karapiros of the world, two things will stand out - one visible, the other must be imagined.

The best crews make it look easy.

In the same way, think of Vivian Richards dismantling test cricket's best bowling attacks; or Daniel Carter gliding through a gap only he had noticed; or Roger Federer whipping a ball from two metres outside his forehand corner at an angle to defy the laws of physics for a diagonal crosscourt winner; or Tiger Woods easing a ball 150m from an awkward lie to a metre from the pin.

Impossible for the merely good international sportsman to do. Just another day at the office for the greats.

Not all rowing combinations work. If you think the rowers turn up, find a spare seat and pop their bum in it, think again.

There is a reason for who sits where.

Dudley Storey had a firsthand experience of this at Mexico City at the 1968 Olympic Games.

He was part of a coxed four, with Warren Cole, Ross Collinge and Dick Joyce, plus cox Simon Dickie.

When they began preparations for the Olympics, master coach Rusty Robertson had placed the quartet in this order: Cole at stroke, Collinge in the No 2 seat, Joyce at No 3 and Storey in the bow (that is, at the front of the boat, facing the backs of the other three).

It didn't work. In fact Robertson once remarked that when they set out on their campaign they were "the funniest looking crew you'd ever seen".

Things weren't working. The rowers weren't happy. So when Robertson went away for a long weekend, the quartet acted.

The first attempt at rejigging still had Storey in the bow "which I loathed" but the second tinkering was a different story, so to speak. Joyce was stroke, Storey at No 3, Collinge No 2 and Cole in the bow.

"Warren didn't think he was a bowman either, but we went out and it worked.

"Everybody was happy, some experimentation had been done and people weren't really trying to appease their own ego. They were actually trying to think how to get maximum speed out of this boat.

"And when we got off the water we thought, 'Jeepers that's better'. By the time Rusty came back we said, 'You'd better have a look at this'."

And Robertson's reaction? "He was not entirely happy, but he was too good a coach not to let it go. He just took a look at everyone's faces and realised he had a happy bunch of boys."

The result? An Olympic gold medal.

Storey was in the coxless four which won silver at Munich four years later, with current head coach Dick Tonks, Collinge and Noel Mills.

The point is, would those medals have been won had the rowers been in different seats? Storey is adamant. "No. We wouldn't have got the same results."

STOREY went on to manage the New Zealand team from 1982-86, during which time world championships produced three gold, one silver and two bronze medals, plus a gold and a bronze at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984.

Alan Cotter was the cox in the bronze-winning eight when New Zealand hosted the world championships at Lake Karapiro in 1978, and also snared a silver at the world champs the following year in Bled, Yugoslavia.

He was a national selector last year and is now high performance commissioner for Rowing New Zealand. Cotter essentially shares Storey's assessment of the qualities required in different spots in a boat.

Broadly speaking, it goes like this:

* The stroke is the engine driver, the captain, a driven athlete who can push or cajole. He, or she, sets the tempo.

In Storey's words, you'd like them to be a person who is "half mad, who love to go, love to fight and love to be amongst it all the time and can instill some of their qualities into the people behind."

Storey cited Tony Hurt, stroke in the famous gold medal-winning eight at Munich, as someone who "if you were to pick on ergometer scores, on their ability to run round the block faster than you or me, you wouldn't pick him at all. But he was as tough as old boots, never gave it and hated losing, and that's the sort of bloke you put in the stroke seat."

* The middle seats of a four or eight are where you place your strongest rowers, the grunters. Think the locks in a scrum.

* The bow seat needs a technically proficient rower, someone the rest can rely on to be error free. Storey said there was often a case for picking the bowman first, "someone who will do the same thing kilometre after kilometre after kilometre and who never varies".

He added that he had to be top quality because "he's the person you can't see".

Cotter added that for the person in the bow seat, the boat can often feel light so they need to be "on top of their work"; the middle "feels a bit heavier" and the stroke needs "really good feel for the boat and its rhythm and can pass that onto the other guys".

When it came to finding out what combinations work best, both men concur that a measure of experimentation comes into it. However, Cotter said these days as the elite rowers are under the microscope all year round, based at Lake Karapiro, there is more scope for experimentation before they head for Europe. Rowers are put into small boats for training to assess speed and development.

Cotter reckons coaches need to be careful not to over-experiment.

"There's a bit of experimentation but you don't want to do too much because consistency comes when you've got confidence. As soon as you have too many changes, it's not quite there, and boat speed comes from confidence and knowing your own ability."

Certainly, there is room for selectors' gut feeling for what might work, who might provide an extra edge in a particular seat.

Storey remembers the Munich eight - plus Dickie - were drawn from nine different clubs round the country. Coach Robertson clearly had an ability to make the parts blend into a superior sum.

These days, it's changed and when New Zealand crews challenge for gold at worlds and Olympic Games, they have been together months, sometimes years.

But the core theme hasn't changed in the 38 years since that first Olympic gold.

"It's about placing people where they are best suited to make the boat go faster," Cotter said. Simple as that.


Roll of honour

New Zealand's medal winners at world championships

1970 (St Catherine's, Canada)
Bronze: Men's eight (Warren Cole, Wybo Veldman, Murray Watkinson, John Hunter, Dick Joyce, Dudley Storey, Gary Robertson, Gil Cawood, Simon Dickie (cox)

1974 (Lucerne, Switzerland)
Bronze: Men's eight (Tony Hurt, Alex McLean, Lindsay Wilson, Athol Earl, Trevor Coker, Danny Keane, Dave Rodger, Ross Blomfield, David Simmons (cox)

1975 (Nottingham)
Bronze: Men's eight (Grant McAuley, Alex McLean, Dave Rodger, Athol Earl, Lindsay Wilson, Ross Collinge, Trevor Coker, Peter Dignan, David Simmons (cox)

1977 (Amsterdam)
Silver: Men's coxless four (Dave Lindstrom, Des Lock, Ivan Sutherland, Dave Rodger)

1978 (Lake Karapiro)
Bronze: Men's eight (Mark James, Greg Johnston, Dave Rodger, Des Lock, Ross Lindstrom, Dave Lindstrom, Ivan Sutherland, Noel Mills, Alan Cotter (cox)

1979 (Bled, Yugoslavia)
Silver: Men's eight (Grant McAuley, Tony Brook, Tim Logan, Greg Johnston, Conrad Robertson, Peter Jansen, Mark James, Robbie Robinson, Alan Cotter (cox)

1982 (Lucerne)
Gold: Men's eight (Mike Stanley, Andrew Stevenson, Dave Rodger, Roger White-Parsons, Chris White, Les O'Connell, George Keys, Tony Brook, Andy Hay (cox)
Bronze: Women's single scull (Stephanie Foster)
1983 (Duisberg, Germany)
Gold: Men's eight (Mike Stanley, Andrew Stevenson, Dave Rodger, Roger White-Parsons, Chris White, Barrie Mabbott, George Keys, Nigel Atherfold, Andy Hay (cox)
Gold: Men's coxed four (Conrad Robertson, Greg Johnston, Keith Trask, Les O'Connell)

1986 (Nottingham)
Silver: Men's coxed four (Bruce Holden, Greg Johnston, Chris White, Nigel Atherfold)
Bronze: Women's double scull (Stephanie Foster, Robyn Clarke)

1989 (Bled)
Silver: Women's lightweight double sculls (Philippa Baker, Linda de Jong)
Bronze: Men's coxless four (Campbell Clayton-Greene, Bill Coventry, Ian Wright, Alastair Mackintosh)

1990 (Lake Barrington, Tasmania)
Bronze: Single scull (Eric Verdonk)

1991 (Vienna)
Gold: Women's lightweight single scull (Philippa Baker)

1993 (Roudnice, Czech Republic)
Gold: Women's double scull (Philippa Baker, Brenda Lawson)

1994 (Indianapolis)
Gold: Women's double scull (Philippa Baker, Brenda Lawson)
Silver: Men's lightweight double scull (Mike Rodger, Rob Hamill)

1995 (Tampere, Finland)
Silver: Men's coxed four (Chris White, Andrew Matheson, Murdoch Dryden, Chris McAsey)
Bronze: Women's double scull (Philippa Baker, Brenda Lawson)

1998 (Cologne)
Gold: Men's single scull (Rob Waddell)

1999 (St Catherines)
Gold: Men's single scull (Rob Waddell)

2001 (Lucerne)
Silver: Women's coxless four (Nicky Coles, Kate Robinson, Rochelle Saunders, Jackie Abraham)
Silver: Women's quadruple scull (Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, Paula Twining, Sonia Waddell)
Silver: Women's double scull (Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell)

2002 (Seville, Spain)
Gold: Women's double scull (Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell)

2003 (Milan)
Gold: Women's double scull (Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell)

2005 (Gifu, Japan)
Gold: Men's single scull (Mahe Drysdale)
Gold: Men's coxless pair (Nathan Twaddle/George Bridgewater)
Gold:Women's double scull (Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell)
Gold: Women's coxless pair (Juliette Haigh/Nicky Coles)