KEY POINTS:
How serious is Rob Waddell about making an Olympic comeback?
Dead serious would seem to be the answer.
A source close to the Waddells told the Herald on Sunday that New Zealand's sole gold medal winner at the 2000 Sydney Olympics has lost 20kg since the end of the America's Cup in a bid to force his way into a crew for the Beijing Olympics.
Waddell, a single sculler before embarking on a colourful sporting career that included a stint as a lock for Waikato 'B' and two America's Cup regattas onboard Team New Zealand, has been back in training on Lake Karapiro. In public he has played it low-key, saying at a recent speaking engagement that, "I wouldn't read too much into that. I just want to keep fit. Some people like to run, some swim and others cycle but getting out in a skiff is my enjoyment".
However, the level of his training would suggest otherwise.
To be a successful grinder, Waddell had to bulk up significantly. He has now shed that bulk to get back to a near-perfect rowers' build, long and lean with a high power-to-weight ratio.
"He's doing a bit of work with us," Rowing New Zealand high performance manager Andrew Matheson said. "He's really just seeing how things pan out."
Matheson said Waddell was "sort of" training on his own, but admitted he had been racing with and against the other guys in the high performance squad.
"From our perspective, if he was to come back in we'd love to have him... but if it doesn't pan out that way, we're happy that we've got a number of great athletes here to work with," Matheson said.
For Waddell to force his way into a crew, most likely the four or the eight, he would have to pass a number of exams from erg testing and on-water racing, to the final Olympic trials in early March.
World record-holder and three-time world champion Mahe Drysdale has a lock on the single scull that Waddell used to dominate, but Waddell's America's Cup experience has turned the Cambridge oarsman on to the team aspect of sport. "You quickly learn that the sum of what you can produce working together as a team is far greater than what you can as an individual," he said recently.
