Rowing: Waddell's the man to anchor the boat

Rob Waddell's musings about getting an eight together for 2004 prompts Herald journalist ANDY HAY, a former Olympic cox for New Zealand, to ponder our chances.

Looking ahead is hard if you are caught in the full beam of our glaring shortfall at these Games.

But it's infinitely easier for someone on top of the world. Someone like Rob Waddell.

So it's great to hear the Olympic champion has hopes of blazing down the course in a Kiwi eight at Athens in 2004.

New Zealand rowing must be chuffed.

Waddell's Olympic gold is hardly likely to spawn a nation of would-be single sculling champions. It's a solitary, often lonely, pursuit.

But there is something magical about the eight.

In no other sport has New Zealand produced such staggering results at world championship and Olympic level, especially in the eight. We are very good at rowing.

There are, however, a few mighty leaps between our current standing in the big boat and lining up in Athens.

The previous crew we sent to the world championships finished 10th and were a long way off qualifying for Sydney.

And that, says NZ Rowing chief executive Mike Stanley, is the reality.

"We'd love to have an eight. But the best guys after Rob were in the coxless four and then there's a second-tier of rowers behind them.

"It's not just a matter of drafting a whole lot of guys, chucking them in the deep end and hoping they swim."

Stanley, who stroked the New Zealand eight to world championship wins in 1982 and 1983, says those victories evolved from a very strong domestic competition.

"We had three or four club crews regularly knocking off world-class times at local regattas, week-in, week-out. We no longer have that."

So who's going to help Waddell carry the boat down to the water?

"Well, that coxless four were a slick package," says Chris White, one of the people on Waddell's thank-you list printed in the Herald this week.

The four's showing in Sydney was well shy of their best and nothing like the form they showed in Europe just before the Games, he said.

And that's the problem we face. Getting a crew, any crew, to perform consistently at the top level.

"I couldn't care less if it was a four an eight or a pair," White. "Do the English public consider Steve Redgrave any less because he isn't in an eight? I don't think so."

While the performance of our coxless four suggests we don't have the numbers, there is a clutch of up-and-comers just waiting for their chance.

Don Rowlands, one of the sport's grand elders and a champion rower himself, believes it's time to make a clear statement of intent.

"We know how to row eights. We've got the people, we just need to provide the incentive. If we keep sending fours and/or pairs that leaves a lot of guys to go surfing.

"With a little imagination you could easily end up with some younger fellas, mixed with older guys, very much like the eight in 1972.

"Some of those guys had been through the smoke and flames and weren't going to get burnt again."

One of those young "brutes," if you recall the advertising campaign after that mighty win in Munich, was Athol Earl.

His son Sam, just 21, represents some of the new talent being fostered at New Zealand Rowing's academy at Lake Karapiro, near Cambridge.

The younger Earl was part of a New Zealand under-23 four that won at the Canada's Cup earlier this year.

In four years' time, who can tell how hot they will be running.

Waddell, with his firepower, would sit in the middle of the boat.

Those are the seats reserved for the people with big hearts and even bigger ergometer scores. People who can literally rip the side off a boat.

One of them is giant Aucklander Steve Westlake, naturally talented enough to make the Olympic squad after being in the rowing game for just three years.

At each end of the boat sit the terriers. Feisty oarsmen such as 22-year-old Rob Hellstrom, stroke of the coxless four.

He is someone Stanley rates highly, someone who can lead the crew - the type of oarsman who can create the right movement and has the "mongrel" needed to make a big eight fast.

And with the help of a top coach and cox, good science and hours of exacting training, Athens starts to shape up as a possibility.

As Stanley says: "None of these things are a mystery. But it also comes down to being hungry, really hungry enough to win.

"There's going to have to be some guys who really step up and put themselves on the line."

If they are out there, but have doubts about their ability, remember this.

Four years ago a virtual novice went to the Atlanta Games and came seventh. He is now the world and Olympic champion in the single sculls.