Rowing: Games sure to inspire newbies

Ross Webb.

Get the jump on an anticipated influx of fellow newbies after the Olympics Games.

That's the advice from Hawke's Bay Rowing Club captain Ross Webb in the countdown to the first of six sessions in the club's novice programme at Clive on Sunday.

"Traditionally the club gets a big influx of novices after the Kiwis have a successful Olympic Games or World Cup campaign. Everybody wants to be a Mahe Drysdale, Emma Twigg, Hamish Bond or Eric Murray," Webb said.

When Hawke's Bay's Evers-Swindell sisters, Caroline and Georgina, completed back-to-back women's double scull golds at the 2008 Olympics almost 200 teenagers turned up at the following weekend's novice session to give the sport a crack. Webb said he expected between 80 and 100 on Sunday and more towards the end of the Olympics.

"Obviously the bigger the pool you start with, the better the talent will be at the end of it."

The club targets secondary school age students but Webb said they are happy to take Year 8 students if they are early developers. During the first couple of weeks the focus is on giving each student at least 20 minutes on the water each session.

"We want to give them a taste and by the second week they should know the correct way to carry their boat to the water, how to keep time and how to keep their blades in the water," Webb explained.

After six weeks of Clive-based sessions, the novices are taken to Wairoa for a weekend camp. Webb said it is after the camp that the novices decide whether or not they want to continue rowing.

"Sometimes, with younger rowers, we might tell them to come back the following year when their bodies have developed. Obviously smaller athletes can be coxswains. I tell coxswains they are the Michael Schumachers of the boat because when they say 'foot down' it goes and I also tell them their rowers are the cylinders and pistons."

Webb pointed out they are hoping for more boys this season than they have had recently.

In previous years many of the Hawke's Bay rowers have left the province for university studies after leaving secondary school but Webb said this may not happen as often once the AUT Millennium Hawke's Bay is up and running.

"The future will look brighter for our athletes as that develops," he added.