World rowing champion Dyke joins Walsh on Halberg Sports Awards stage
Emma Dyke is living her sporting dream with New Zealand’s world champion women’s eight rowing squad finalists at the February 13 Halberg Awards.
The team has been nominated in the Team of the Year and the publicly-decided favourite sporting moment categories.
The 24-year-old is one of two South Canterbury athletes in the list of finalists, joining Timaru shot putter Tom Walsh who won both the supreme Halberg Award and Sportsman of the Year titles in 2019.
Dyke, a former student at Craighead Diocesan School in Timaru, helped make rowing history for New Zealand last year when the women’s eight won world championship gold for the first time.
Dyke occupied the No 2 seat in the boat with her responsibility to maintain the balance and help the boat get up and out of the water at the start.
As an elite athlete, she has been living in Cambridge and training at
Lake Karapiro since 2015. That year she was in the newly formed women’s eight squad which won silver at the world champs in France. In 2016 she was at the Rio Olympics as part of the eight that finished fourth in the final.
‘‘Since then there’s been a lot more blood, sweat and tears,’’ Dyke told The Timaru Herald.
She trains three times a day, twice a week; and two times a day, two other days; with Sundays off. Each session can last between oneand-half hours and three hours.
Crunch time was looming with the Tokyo Olympics just six months away but before then there were two world cup regattas to attend – in Italy in April and Switzerland in May.
With eight women in the squad Dyke said there were many different personalities but they worked hard at having a good culture.
With the stress of the upcoming Olympics they were working on understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses and to value what everyone brought to the boat.
‘‘We work on ‘when there is stress we stay strong’.’’
She returned to her family home at Mayfield for Christmas and also goes there when she has a break after each world cup regatta. Though more of a city girl now, she still enjoys her visits home.
Women rowers are at their peak between the age of 28 and 32, Dyke said.
‘‘So I have a few more years to go.’’
Looking to the future beyond rowing she would like to coach overseas because of her love for the sport and ‘‘to give back’’.