Eight was enough
Victory in men’s eight at Henley capped off golden summer for nine South Niagara athletes
Henley gold is the most precious metal in rowing on this side of the pond.
It is literally the gold standard for the flatwater sport in Canada. Period.
Even the Olympics offers the prospect of silver and bronze medals at the finish line as consolation prizes, but not the Henley. Only gold, and gold alone, is awarded at the annual regatta held each summer in St. Catharines
If they don’t stop for postcards on their way out of town, second- and third-place finishers can only go home with memories of what might have been.
So it’s a big deal to win one medal at Henley, but winning five? That’s so ridiculous it would be downright insane.
Yet nine South Niagara Rowing Club members were just that crazy good in August 1996, when they combined for five-place finishes.
Athletes from the Welland-based club began making Martindale their golden pond early in the regatta. Chris Bonfoco, twin brothers Jeff and Jamie Jocsak and Mike Thibeault set the pace in the intermediate men’s 140-lb. four and, with coxswain Sarah Montgomery joining the crew, rowed to gold in the coxed four in the same division.
South Niagara also launched a four and a coxed four in the senior men’s 140-lb. category and enjoyed the same success going 2-for-2 in gold medals.
Even more remarkable was how eerily similar the different boats were in their composition. Not only was Montgomery again along for the ride
in the coxie seat, but Robb and Tom Blacquiere were identical twins.
Rounding out the senior crew was Craig Green and Steve Montgomery, who was Sarah’s brother, of course. No, we’re not making this up. In August 1996 Albert Einstein had nothing on the South Niagara Rowing Club when it came to the theory of relativity.
And the St. Catharines Rowing Club, the hometown hopeful and the favourite to win the senior men’s eight, had nothing on South Niagara when the time came to run one of the marquee races in the regatta.
After trailing St. Catharines across the finish line in every race that season heading into Henley, yet another also-ran finish seemed all but certain when South Niagara trailed with 750 metres remaining in the two-kilometre event.
With Tom Blacquiere setting the pace in the stroke seat and with Sarah Montgomery dictating the pace from the coxie seat, South Niagara slipped into a higher gear after that.
“They said ‘We got to go now! and we all just started pulling together,” Robb Blacquiere recalled more than two decades later.
The South Niagara eight won by, fittingly enough, 8/100ths of a second.
“They had to go to a photo finish to determine the winner.”
Athletes in the eight ranged in age from 17 and 23, with the Jocsaks about to finish high school at Notre Dame as the Blacquieres wrapping up their studies at Brock University.
The gold in the eight was the Welland-based rowing club’s most memorable, not only that summer but since its inception in 1976. Last year the club celebrated its 40th anniversary by honouring the eight as the first inductees into the South Niagara Rowing Club Wall of Fame.
“In rowing there’s no greater victory than getting nine people synching together,” Robb Blacquiere said.