The Whanganui contingent at the NZ Masters Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro at the weekend.
The Whanganui contingent at the NZ Masters Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro at the weekend.
While New Zealand's top rowers were doing battle in Bulgaria against the rest of the world, a contingent of fifteen masters rowers from the Aramoho Whanganui Rowing and Union Boat clubs, with super cox Sue O'Leary in charge, raced at Lake Karapiro for the 2018 NZ Masters Rowing Champs.
There were about 300 rowers from around New Zealand and as far as Adelaide and Sydney racing, involving 28 clubs, from September 15-16.
With 13 rowers from Aramoho and two from Union, we proudly came away with 13 gold, five silver and seven bronze medals, with no local rower going away empty handed.
Colin Wright won his first New Zealand title in a Mixed E Eight of Richard Brock, Trevor Rush, myself, Colin, Steph and Jacs Rush, Tash Carver, Tony Upchurch and Sue O'Leary.
The eight's are pretty intense, but a lot of fun, and it was satisfying to beat a strong Auckland eight that had "ring ins" from far and wide, whereas Whanganui put together multiple results from our two 'sister' clubs.
Another highlight for me included Martin Bridger coming from behind in a full field to win the Men's D Single – a competitive age group – and the smile on his face in achieving that.
Martin Bridger after winning the Men's D (50-54 year) single title.
Murray Carey, Garth Hammond, Bruce Osborne and Ewen Noble took out not only the Men's H Coxless Four but went down an age group to win the G Coxless Four and a bronze amongst the 'youngsters' in F grade (60-64 years) which is very impressive.
As expected, the Blinkhorne & Carroll Winters Series overall winners Richard Brock and Trevor Rush cleaned out the Men's G Double and Pair events.
Equally, Steph and Jacs Rush, Carver and myself cleaned out the Womens C Quad and Four events.
It was nice to have a Union BC win in the Mixed D Double with Martin Bridger, and equally AWRC would have enjoyed their silver medal in their Men's F Eight of Brock, Des Lock, Carey, Upchurch, Osborne, Noble, Allan Luff, Hammond and O'Leary.
We came away with sore bodies but more importantly had great fun, teamwork and camaraderie with the NZ Masters community.
Next up for Whanganui Rowing is the Tonks 6km on Sunday, October 14, which is a great lead in for the 10th anniversary of the Billy Webb Challenge, featuring double Olympic champion, Mahe Drysdale on Sunday, December 1.
I will comment further on those and the Jury Cup in weeks to come, but will have my five cents worth on the results of our New Zealand rowers at the recent world champs and what the future might look like.
Bravo for the women's double and pair and the men's double in securing hard won medals again, including our own Kerri Gowler and Chris Harris.
There's a fine balance between performing yearly for world champs and ensuring the peak performance is at the Olympics, but I think there's a number of concerning factors which could be affecting our elite rowers performances that are of most concern.
Between losing some quality coaches (Dick Tonks, Dave Thompson and Ian Wright) over the last few years, the lure of American universities and NZ Rowing's failure to work well addressing that, plus the recent resignation of the High Performance Manager with concerns over "culture", there is a myriad of issues for our sport to sort pretty fast.
In saying that, NZ Rowing has had nearly 20 great years since Rob Waddell's 2000 Olympic Gold in the single scull and all good things come to an end or need a revival.
We have also lost the experience in New Zealand teams from the likes of Eric Murray, Hamish Bond and Whanganui's own Rebecca Scown, and as you saw with the effect of Drysdale on a Men's Quad that was going nowhere until Mahe jumped in, you can't buy experience.
