Old guard gets gold
Athletes as old as 82 showcase rowing skills at Royal Canadian Henley Masters Regatta
Two coaches who practised what they preached with some of their students in the grandstand were among the multiple gold medal winners at the 135 Royal Canadian Henley Masters Regatta Sunday in St. Catharines.
Janet Lancaster, coach of the under-17 women’s program at the St. Catharines Rowing Club, and Marion Markarian, a high school rowing coach at Sir Winston Churchill, set the pace in the women’s E-I 59-kilogram double after teaming with Vanessa Moors and Marlo Soutenberg to win the women’s D-I quad.
Markarian, 64, said “absolutely everything went right” in the quad, which gave St. Catharines Rowing Club the first of its three gold medals at the one-day, 53-event competition on Martindale Pond.
“We had a good start, we had a good body, and the finish took care of itself,” she said. “It was a solid row all around.”
Lancaster, 59, said coaches don’t necessarily have an advantage when it comes to competing in masters rowing, a category for athletes 21 and older.
“It’s hard because when you’re coaching it limits your time on the water,” she said. “So really it’s hard to get your own workouts in.”
“But I’ve got some of my girls here who are watching me, so hopefully I’m inspiring them a little bit that they can row into their later years.”
Lancaster said adrenaline contributed to the handicapped boat’s split-second victory over South Niagara’s Sandra Frayne and Catherine Timms.
“We raced that at a lot higher rate than we normally would,” she said. “We knew we had to be within a certain margin of them.”
While Markarian had one more race after she won the women’s double with Janet Lancaster, she didn’t hold anything in reserve for later.
“You just got to go crazy, you can’t hold back,” she said. “Hey, you might not get another shot.”
The most finals Markarian has competed in at the Henley Masters, a one-day event traditionally held on the Sunday before race week for the Henley for club crews begin, is four.
“At the end of the day I’ll be crawling. A little bit of yogurt and I’ll be OK,” she said with a laugh.
Markarian and James Walker, 66, wound up placing third behind rowers from Calgary and Guelph in her third final of the day, the mixed E-I double.
A hometown hopeful didn’t make it to the podium until the 10th final of the day, the men’s AA-D quad, which was won by Bruce Adams, Doug Hamilton, Michael Hughes and Drew Scobie of the Ridley Graduate Boat Club.
“It will be the first of many, St. Catharines will win a bunch,” Hamilton, 58, promised after being told the boat ended the win drought for the four rowing clubs from the region.
Only three boats raced in the final, but Hamilton said the size of the field doesn’t affect the race plan
all that much.
“At the end of the day, you’re just rowing in your own boat, trying to get to the finish line as fast as you can.”
He said the “two young guys in the middle” — Adams, 49, and Scobie, 42 — gave the boat a combination of “energy ” and “attitude” that couldn’t be beat.
“The old guys have the attitude and the young guys have the energy,” Hamilton said. Hamilton and Hughes returned to the podium after edging a Calgary Rowing Club twosome by 0.04.420 seconds in the masters E double.
Hughes thanked the elements for helping the older Tigers earn their stripes in the doubles.
“It was a little choppier, I think the wind picked up a little bit,” Hughes, who turned 58 on Monday, said of the conditions that produced a tailwind.
“A little more aid for us,” he added with a smile.
Hughes described competing in masters as the YMCA for rowers who can’t let go of their oars as they age.
“We just row together to train,” a distribution supervisor at The Beer Store said. “This is our Y, coming out here every day.”
The old guys have the attitude and the young guys have the energy.” Ridley Graduate Boat Club member Doug Hamilton, 58
Michelle Kerr and Susan Nichol, both 51, rowed St. Catharines to a close victory — 3:59.950 seconds to 4:00.710 — over South Niagara’s Sue Battersby-Campbell and Timms in the women’s D double.
It was third race of the day for the pair, who also competed in a heat for a four and finished fourth in that final.
Kerr has won a “fair bit” of gold in her eight years rowing at the Henley masters, but she hasn’t made it to the podium each time out.
“It’s harder and harder each year it seems.”
The feeling of winning never gets old, however.
“No, it’s still as exciting as the first time you win.”
As members of the host club, Kerr and Nichol want to win on “home soil,” but they don’t feel any added pressure on their shoulders as they pulled themselves along the 2,000-metre course.
“Yes, we want to win on home soil, but I don’t feel any more pressure,” Kerr said.
They feel familiarity with Martindale Pond gives them a slight advantage.
“Because we know the course, it’s good for us because we know the landmarks, which is nice,” Kerr said. “You know when you see the base of the bridge it’s almost done.”
She cautioned that knowledge can be a double-edged sword.
“It’s sort of a false sense of hope.”
Nichol said the win against the Welland-based club was anything but easy.
“This race was hard,” she said. “Those girls from South Niagara put up a big fight and, with the wind and the choppy water, it was anybody’s race.
“We knew they were close, so that drove us.
“We had to keep fighting the whole way, and even when we crossed the line it wasn’t quite sure whether it was us or them.”
Hamilton-based Leander Rowing Club’s gold in the women’s D single was more than three decades in the making for Jeanette Fabris-Brimble, who grew up in Grimsby and competed for Denis Morris at the high school level.
“I never stood up here before,” she said from the podium after receiving her gold medal from Henley Rowing Corp. commissioner Bill Schenk.
Fabris-Brimble, who was competing in her third Henley masters for Leander, was nearly overwhelmed by winning her first-ever Henley gold in her second race of the day.
“I’m trying hard not to cry right now,” she said. “Mr. (Stan) Lapinski here just made it the icing on the cake.”
Lapinski, the longtime official regatta photographer, taught FabrisBrimble English in the late 1970s at Denis Morris.
She rowed in a women’s quad that trailed the St. Catharines and Riverside rowing clubs across the finish line in the women’s D-I quad two and a half hours earlier.
Sunday’s regatta in St. Catharines attracted 462 athletes from 44 clubs from as far as Mexico City and Zhengzhou, China.
It was Dietmar Kuttelwascher’s first time competing in the Henley Masters, but his second visit to the venue. He attended the 1999 World Rowing Championships, which were held on the Henley course.
“I was sitting over there,” he said pointing put to the grandstand after winning the masters D single.
The 52-year-old information technology specialist has been with the Nashville Rowing Club for about five years, but he has been involved in the sport since he was seven growing up in Austria.
He was his club’s lone representative at a regatta that many masters rowers red circle on their calendars.
“The reputation of the regatta, the regatta course,” he answered when asked what prompted the return visit to St. Catharines.
Kuttelwascher competed for Austria in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, finishing 10th in the coxed pair.
Because only gold medals are awarded as the Henley Masters, neither of the region’s two other clubs got to celebrate top-three finishes on the podium in front of the grandstand.
Welland’s Notre Dame Rowing Club members had two place finishes and one third, while South Niagara finished second in two finals.
Toronto’s Argonaut Rowing Club won the efficiency trophy and tied the Georgian Bay Rowing Club from Midland with the most gold medals, five apiece.