Canadians back in big boat business
As one-time Olympic powerhouses go, Canada’s rowing program has found itself frustratingly humbled of late. The program that produced a remarkable 11 medals, including five golds, between the 1992 and 1996 Games has produced just nine medals in the five Olympics since.
Various coaches and executives have come and gone with the less-than-thrilling results. A one-medal performance at an otherwise dismal Rio Olympics meant funding had to be slashed, too. So it’s understandable why Canada will be leaning on various icons of its rowing glory days in the lead-up to next summer’s Tokyo Olympics. Last month Marnie McBean was named the chef de mission of Canada’s 2020 Olympic team, the three-time gold medallist from that magical Barcelona-Atlanta era a stellar choice as both a mentor and an ambassador. And the lead-up to rowing’s world championships, which begin Sunday in Austria and will have huge implications on Olympic qualification, has seen Canada tap the wisdom of another legendary producer of podium performances for the national Maple Leaf.
That would be Mike Spracklen, the 81-year-old coach who presided over some of Canada’s greatest triumphs, including Olympic gold in the men’s eight in 2008 and 1992. Spracklen hasn’t been an official member of Canada’s coaching staff since he led the men’s eight to silver at the London Olympics, an event around which he publicly aired various grievances with the direction of the organization. The Englishman was fired not long after, landing in Russia to coach a program whose Rio run was sunk by the fallout of a state-sponsored doping scandal.
Spracklen had been mostly out of coaching ever since, spending much of his time caring for his beloved wife, Annie, who has been ill. And as for Spracklen’s penchant for treating the eight as a country’s flagship boat — well, Canada abandoned the philosophy in the lead-up to Rio, where it declined to enter a men’s eight in an attempt to maximize medal chances favouring a four and a quad, neither of which reached the podium.
But keen followers of the sport will know that Canada’s men’s eight is back in business. The crew, revived in April and stroked by 2012 silver medallist Will Crothers, has shown some promising results this summer, winning bronze at the second of three World Cup events back in June. With a top-five finish at the world championships required for the eight to earn a direct ticket to Tokyo, the crew’s coach Terry Paul, the coxswain of that golden 1992 eight, approached Spracklen about overseeing part of this week’s training camp in Austria. A mentee was delighted when a mentor obliged.
“To be able to engage Mike in this way, to tell him he’s needed by Rowing Canada, by us, by me — I think it’s really cool,” Paul said. “My approach of building this eight, the basis of it, has really come from what I know from Mike. And I feel like this is a huge opportunity to connect this group to the glory of the past, and inspire them. I mean, they’re inspired no matter what, and they want to win, and they’re fast. They’re definitely in position to do it now, which we were able to prove in (the second World Cup event) … But it’s nice that we’ve got some nice connections to the history and tradition and, really, the culture of Canadian rowing — and specifically, men’s eights rowing.”
The men’s eight, of course, isn’t Canada’s only boat with Olympic aspirations. There’s a women’s eight that won silver at last year’s world championships. There’s a women’s pair, made up of Caileigh Filmer and Hillary Janssens, that won gold at that regatta. And this year’s World Cup season has seen a handful of Canadian entries climb the podium, a sign they’re among the contenders for world championship hardware.
They’re contenders on a budget, mind you. Though the sport received some $17 million in Own the Podium funding during the quadrennial leading up to Rio, the poor overall results — a single silver medal won by the lightweight women’s double of Patricia Obee and Lindsay Jennerich — saw funding for the four-year run to next summer’s Tokyo Olympics cut substantially. The oars folk are making due on $11.8 million this quadrennial, less than athletics, cycling and swimming.
Which is part of the reason why the eight’s resurgence has come, in part, thanks to funds provided by what Paul described as a private donor.
Spracklen isn’t the only link to better times. Thanks to a post-Rio change in international rules that now allows coxswains of either gender, the men’s eight is being steered by Lesley Thompson-Willie, who’s making a push to qualify for a remarkable ninth trip to the Olympics less than a month removed from her 60th birthday. Thompson-Willie has previously been at the rudder of various women’s crews, earning five Olympic medals along the way. And though she had considered herself retired from in-boat duties after 2016 and had taken up a position on Rowing Canada’s coaching staff, both Paul and Spracklen said her wealth of experience — which has brought with it a reputation for cool headedness under pressure — is difficult to match.
“I don’t see a lot of difference (in steering a boat rowed by men),” said Thompson-Willie. “I guess the biggest difference is just the raw horsepower. Men are just faster. It’s like being in a super, super fast race car. Things happen quicker because it’s a faster race. Everything is sped up.
“This particular group of men are really nice. They’re great individuals. It’s a really enjoyable environment — a highperformance environment that’s working well right now.”
How well it works will ultimately be judged by results. The leadership installed since Rio, high-performance director Iain Brambell and head coach Dick Tonks, have been speaking optimistically. And Spracklen, for his part, called his time at Canada’s training camp “a positive experience.” And while he acknowledged the limits of the influence of a 21⁄ 2- day coaching session on a crew that’s been building habits for months, he said he was of the belief he had a performance edge to offer, albeit a small one.
“Races are won and lost by the smallest of margins,” Spracklen said. “I was able to show them how they could move the boat faster. But putting (those insights) into practice for 2,000 metres is not simple, and we will see how they manage to perform in a few days’ time when they race in the world championships.”