Winning strokes

By whatever measure you use – be it numbers in the club, trophies in the cabinet, titles won, Olympians developed or overseas links forged – the Otago University Rowing Club is a success.

But there is also a bigger picture to be admired, including a membership of between 200 to 250 which, club manager Glen Sinclair says, includes rowers of all levels.

"We start absolute beginners and within five or six weeks they could be racing at the New Zealand University Championships, and we also have athletes who are on the national elite team winning World Championship medals – as well as everyone in-between," he says.

"Our biggest area is our beginners who, perhaps, never had access to rowing as a sport at high school."

Sinclair puts much of the success down to a strong work ethic. Rowers are usually down at the club by 5.45am to train, then off to make an 8am lecture. At the end of the day they are back at 5pm or at the gym.

"That's a big part of the attitude here – that their training is almost as important as their rowing."

The club is also blessed with a fantastic harbour with long, calm mornings and a good 16-18 kilometre training area.

It is a recipe which has spurred on the rowing careers of a number of Otago alumni such as Olympic gold medallists Hamish Bond and Nathan Cohen, and bronze medallist Rebecca Scown, who also went on to win a couple of world titles. Other high flyers include Fiona Bourke, Fergus Fauvel and Alistair Bond who is making a name for himself as a lightweight.

Even at club level there are international opportunities. Men's teams have competed in Russia and China and the women have gone to South Africa, America and China.

"We're the only university in New Zealand that gets invited to compete internationally and has international teams coming here as well."

The senior women's eight travelled to China in July winning three out of three international universities' regattas in China competing against crews from French, Italian and Chinese universities, as well as Yale and Oxford.

Their preparation for temperatures above 40 degrees and high humidity was helped greatly by time spent doing hard exercise in the School of Physical Education's environmental chamber.

Aside from a great work ethic, the club boasts fine facilities, built in 2002 with contributions from the OUSA building levy, the Community Trust of Otago and the Lotteries Commission, as well as plenty of fundraising. It also enjoys the support of keen benefactors who have a history with the club, including Sir Eion Edgar and David Richwhite.

It boasts a huge storage area for the club's skiffs, a social area overlooking the harbour and excellent training facilities, including the country's only indoor rowing tank, used to improve rowing technique.

"It has been a huge asset in getting our novices up and going – we very rarely lose the national novice eights and I think our women have won around 10 years in a row," Sinclair says.

"But one of the biggest joys is the children with disabilities programme where kids who will never get out on the water in a boat are doing the next best thing, splashing away with an oar and doing all-but the real thing in the tank."

The club also runs school programmes, helps train a Special Olympians group and even draws athletes from American high schools who are sent to Dunedin to train before colleges assess them for scholarships.

A lot has changed at the Otago University Rowing Club since it was formed in 1929, such as the high proportion of female rowers. It stands at roughly two-thirds females to one-third males, compared to about half-and-half at secondary school level.

This willingness to change bodes well for the club's future as it develops other areas such as the inter-college eights race – a mixed eight with four boys and four girls.

"The traditional colleges of Knox and Selwyn were winning it for the first few years, but the likes of Unicol, Cumberland and Arana are now taking over. It is fiercely contested," Sinclair adds.

They have also set up a high performance rowing programme with Rowing New Zealand, University of Otago and the Otago Polytechnic, training out of the High Performance Sport New Zealand centre.

Despite the look of the building and its facilities, Sinclair says they are running it “on the smell of an oily rag” with the help of the OUSA, which owns the building, and valuable support from the University.

"I would like to think the rowing club is returning the investment through marketing Otago overseas."

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MARK WRIGHT

Photos: Alan Dove