Rowing: Teen defends bid to lose weight

Timaru lightweight rower Bridget White has defended her decision to go for a run in heavy clothing and wrapped in plastic to help to make the required weight just before racing at the national schools regatta at Lake Karapiro.

Rowing New Zealand executive director Mike Stanley criticised the actions - and the inclusion of lightweight rowing at secondary school regattas - saying it was dangerous and unacceptable for young rowers to be put in a weight-loss situation.

White, from Craighead Diocesan School, was surprised to be 200g over the maximum 59kg two hours before her race on Monday, on scales which have been protested about at the regatta.

The 16-year-old was wrapped in heavy clothing and plastic and went for a run, a traditional method for lightweights to lose weight.

She then cut more than an inch off her hair before her final weigh-in, five minutes before the deadline of an hour before the race.

Had she failed, the crew would not have been able to race.

Three crews, Christchurch's Rangi Ruru and St Margaret's, and Auckland Diocesan, had already suffered that fate.

The South Island champions - White, Larissa Beeby, Libby Aitken, Lucy Hervey and cox Mallory McIver - won their heat and are strong medal contenders for tomorrow's final.

"We are really careful, we have a nutritionist on the team and consult her with everything," White said in Cambridge yesterday.

"We have been on a healthy diet for a couple of months and we tend to build up muscle during the season and that is a bit heavier.

"Our coach, Dean Milne, would never let us do anything silly. He is very protective of us," she said, adding that she would dine out on lots of chocolate after the regatta.

Stanley said RNZ was powerless to stop the lightweight events, with member schools of the Secondary Schools Rowing Association again voting to retain them at the annual meeting at Karapiro on Tuesday.

But next year, instead of a lightweight women's crew having to average 57kg each and a men's crew 70kg, all crew members will be allowed to weigh the maximum, 59kg for a woman and 72.5 for a man.

Stanley said the death last year of a German lightweight, who collapsed with hypothermia and dehydration when on a run trying to lose weight, highlighted the dangers.

Milne, a former lightweight, said the events were essential at school level. "They are too big to be a cox and too small to compete at top level against 70-80kg athletes, so this is a very competitive grade for them to race."

Milne, who admitted White's actions were out of "desperation" because of the circumstances, said his crew were all below weight last year and that was why they entered them this year.

"These girls have worked for six months for this. It is easy for people on the sidelines to criticise, but they weren't training with them at 5 am or down at the gym with them at night."

- NZPA