Rowing: Fascination with pain adds to rowing's odd mystique

Nicola Millin from Waitaki Girls High School racing on the second day of the New Zealand Secondary Schools Rowing Champs on Lake Karapiro. Picture / Fotopress

Lake Karapiro is a long way for Nicki Millin. Not just from her Oamaru home. But a long way, as in the rowing course.

The 16-year-old sixth former and her mates train on a harbour course barely 300m long.

Millin looks at Karapiro's course, which stretches about as far as the eye can see, and sighs.

"We've got the shortest rowing course in New Zealand in Oamaru," says Millin, who has rowed for Otago junior squads.

"We're very skilled turn-arounders ... But it's hard to build up base fitness doing that all the time. I wish we had a 10km stretch I could row."

This is Millin's third appearance at the Maadi Cup, the ever-expanding secondary school rowing regatta.

But this time she has no crewmates. Fundraising problems left Millin as the lone Waitaki Girls High flagbearer.

Thanks to her coach Owen Gould's work connections, Millin made it by selling pork bones to raise $3000 for her air fare and expenses.

Even Gould has remained behind, though for work reasons. But Millin's parents, nursery owners Sue and Bruce, have driven to watch their daughter in the under-17 and 18 single sculls.

Oamaru may lack rowing water, but is not a total rowing backwater. It was the home of the late, great coach Rusty Robertson after all.

Millin says: "Just the other day, Owen had me using one arm, going round and round until my arm hurt. He told me it was one of Rusty's exercises."

So she has Rusty's influence on her side, and competitors from Oamaru's co-ed school St Kevins College have taken her under their wing.

"They say, 'And oh Nicki as well' at the end of their sentences," she laughs, revelling in her lone-Waitaki status.

Millin's story epitomises the spirit of the Maadi Cup - technically the prize for the boys senior eights but also the name of the regatta. Everywhere, dedicated youngsters are hell bent on rowing but willing to help each other out.

In this respect, it has probably always been the same, ever since Mt Albert Grammar won the Maadi Cup at Wanganui in 1947, a few years after the Cairo Rowing Club gifted the trophy to New Zealand servicemen.

Not everything has remained the same though, of course.

Just two decades ago, it was three boys to every girl. This week, there are 1000 girl rowers, and 775 boys.

Then, about 700 competitors represented 55 schools. Now, there are 2000 (including coxswains) from more than 100 schools. A three-day regatta has grown to six-and-a-half.

The increasing numbers are a strain - the boat storage area for instance is at bursting point - so future regattas at Karapiro and Lake Twizel in the lower South Island may be trimmed.

But despite the rising numbers, these are also calmer times, with the wild Saturday night party antics a thing of the past.

A more sensible age, perhaps, helped by an earlier finish on Saturday which encourages many competitors to leave before nightfall.

Wellingtonian Garry Carr-Smith, for 16 years the schools' rowing boss, winces as he remembers one Karapiro party.

"The little darlings were misbehaving ... It was quite frightening actually," says Carr-Smith.

In subsequent years, police helped cut off ex-school rowers and locals bringing in supplies.

But while some things have changed, others remain the same. Even if the booze isn't flowing, the youthful hormones will be.

"What did an Evers-Swindell say on TV once ... you wanted to go to the Maadi Cup cos that's where all the boys are," says Carr-Smith.

We'll presume this still holds true.

This is also still a European domain - it is almost a shock to see a crowd minus almost any Maori, Pacific Island or Asian faces.

And, as in the old days, rowers and supporters sleep just about anywhere, from camp sites to motels to friends' houses.

The spirit of generous competition is also still alive.

Carr-Smith recalls an occasion when his daughters' boat was badly damaged.

"I had schools queuing up with offers of a replacement," he says.

On another occasion, the entrants in a race agreed to a late switch of time so a boy could attend his grandfather's funeral without forcing his crew to scratch.

Just this week, a dispensation enabled Trident High from Whakatane to borrow a coxswain after theirs broke a wrist playing soccer in the camp ground.

Enthusiasm and determination abounds at the Maadi Cup, even if it sometimes is coated in the cool of youth.

Like the time a girl cut off her golden locks to make a lightweight limit, only to find out she would have made it anyway. What was left of her hair was then dyed pink.

And right now, everyone is enthusing over the impact that the 2004 Olympic rowing effort - led by golden twins Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell - has had on the sport.

The Maadi Cup in turn helps unearth stars. Regatta veterans sparkle as they recall Caroline Evers-Swindell racing from podium to start line as she won four golds in a morning at Karapiro a decade ago.

"You just knew she was something special," recalls one Maadi vet, who describes the regatta's continuing attraction being its "atmosphere, ambience and mystique".

But rowing is also about pain. Just ask Millin, who was thrilled once to finish 250m behind an Evers-Swindell. Millin would love the strength of the twins, but marvels more at Sonia Waddell's technique.

Millin's long-held aim is to make a national junior squad, and she never contemplated quitting even when her original fourth form rowing mates fell by the wayside.

"It never crossed my mind - I love rowing," says Millin, who thrives on 10 two-hour training sessions a week.

"I love the pain of winning. I know it sounds weird when we say things like that - your whole body aches.

"Rowing is such a commitment sport that you only get dedicated, nice people. If you're not a commitment person, you're not going to be here."

* Tomorrow Caroline Evers-Swindell talks to David Leggat about the year ahead.