Don’t write off Drysdale just yet
OPINION: It’s a call I’m not prepared to make: Is Mahe Drysdale’s magnificent rowing career racing towards an end?
There was some validity in at least posing the question Drysdale had finished more than 25 seconds behind Robbie Manson in the premier men’s single scull final at the New Zealand championships at Lake Karapiro.
The 39-year-old was fifth in the six-man final. Drysdale has been well off the pace all summer since returning to the Rowing New Zealand national summer squad following a lengthy break after winning his second consecutive Olympic gold medal at Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
But concern he would quickly lose his long-held spot as the country’s leading men’s single sculler were quashed recently when Rowing NZ indicated Manson and Drysdale would be named as part of the team to contest two World Cup regattas in Europe in June and July. Unlike the world championships, countries can enter more than one boat in a class at the World Cup events so Manson and Drysdale are likely to have two regattas to show their wares, with a July showdown in Lucerne set to decide who will contest the class in the black singlet in Bulgaria in September.
It took the sting out of a string of domestic regattas this summer which has seen the 28-year-old Manson reign over Drysdale and other top scullers, including the reigning world doubles champions John Storey and Chris Harris.
Drysdale was always going to take some time to get back to anywhere near his best after 11 months out of the boat following his dramatic title defence in Rio. After pondering his future with two Olympic gold and a bronze stuck away, Drysdale knew he had to make a four-year commitment to chase a fourth gong and a third goal in Tokyo in 2020.
There’s a precedent for him too.
Drysdale took a lengthy break after his 2012 London Olympics triumph and didn’t get up to full speed as a late start to 2013 ended in a premature finish when he failed to make it past the quarterfinals at the world championships. That proved to be only a minor setback on his way to his desperate photo-finish win over Croatia’s Damir Martin in Rio.
But he now has Manson to deal with daily and in the two years ahead of the Games in Tokyo.
Manson last year erased Drysdale’s world’s best time from the records when he raced over
2000m in Poznan in 6min
30.74secs. But he couldn’t reproduce that when fifth at the world championships in Florida after injury hampered his buildup.
That’s left him with something still to prove. Drysdale, in addition to his three Olympic medals, has five world championship victories and three silvers in arguably the most impressive single sculls career by any male.
What Drysdale has done over the past 20 years is chiefly to come up trumps in big moments. He proved doubters wrong in Rio aged 37. To do so again with more mileage on the sculling hubdometer appears already to be a far greater task.
But I’m not saying just yet he can’t do it again.