| Monday August 21, 2000 Australian community adopts
Canadian Olympic rowing team
PATRICIA YOUNG
The Globe and Mail
Sydney -- It was a nice bit of Australian good will.
The friendly Queensland city of Rockhampton built a
$200,000 (Australian) training centre for the Canadian rowing team.
This is an even more stunning gesture when you realize that
the entirely Australian-funded centre was custom built for the Canadian team to prepare
for the Sydney Olympic Games. It is the equivalent of a Montreal suburb happily paying for
a Toronto Maple Leafs training arena.
Canada and Australia are fierce rowing rivals. Canadian
pairs world champions Emma Robinson and Theresa Luke were upset recently by an Australian
boat at a World Cup regatta in Europe. At the Olympics, both boats are pegged as gold
medal prospects.
"The Canadians looked at several locations to hold
their pre-Olympic training camp," Rockhampton rowing coach Alan Bromiley, said.
"When they chose Rockhampton, we raised $100,000 to build a secure boat shed and got
another $100,000 to build a buoyed 2,000-metre [Olympic distance] course.
"They can row for 40 kilometres here on the Fitzroy
River without having to turn around."
The Canadians have become the latest attraction in the
quiet city of 80,000. On the warm evenings, residents gather on the banks of the brackish
river to watch the Canadian team train for the Sydney Games.
"They'll be leaving a lot of people behind cheering
for them," Bromiley said. "We have become big fans, and that's because they fit
in here so well.
"It is pretty laid-back place. [Canadian coach] Al
Morrow said the rowers have no distraction here. They can focus all their energy on
training and preparation."
The coastal city of Rockhampton sits on tropic of
Capricorn. While the Canadian team is training in balmy subtropical conditions, the
Australian team, which turned down the Rockhampton training site, is shivering in
12-degree, grey weather at the Olympic rowing site at Penrith Lakes in suburban Sydney.
Several of the Australian rowers have fallen sick with flu-like symptoms.
Victoria sculler Derek Porter said the Canadian team site
is nearly perfect, but he is still plagued by boat problems that seem to follow him around
the world.
In a sport of big men, Porter stands out at 6 foot 5 and
220 pounds. He has a distinctive long stroke that powers the boat through the water. But
his size and style have made finding the perfect shell difficult.
Porter found that the standard shells were too small for
him. His hips pinched the sides and his legs were not able to lock down fully for the
crucial release at the finish of his stroke. So he turned to Empacher, a German boat
manufacturer, and got a shell with a revolutionary style of rigging. He is one of only two
people to own such a boat.
"In my pursuit of the perfect boat, I decided to have
one custom-built for me," Porter said. "A month later, I got it and it didn't
fit. So the [German) manufacturer made another.
"My second boat which I bought in Europe to train in
was over half a month late arriving. I spent thousands of dollars and a lot of time and it
didn't do me any good."
Timing is everything at this stage of Porter's preparation.
But when he arrived in Australia last week, he discovered he had forgotten two small parts
for his rigging. "So it was back to [a boat with] regular rigging," Porter said.
Porter, the 32-year-old Olympic co-favourite with world
champion Rob Waddell of New Zealand and 1996 Olympic champion Xeno Muller of Switzerland,
said he is primed to win the gold medal despite his chronic boating problems. "I have
visualized it so many times," he said. "I do a lot of mental preparation. I am a
firm believer in that."
In addition to his own training, Porter is helping other
team members. The Victoria-based chiropractor says he ends up doing a bit of therapy on
fellow rowers to help them work out pains and kinks in their backs.
The Canadian team will head to Sydney for the opening
ceremonies of the Games on Sept. 15, and Porter says he wants to savour every moment.
"It's one of the highlights of the Games and nothing
is like it, not even the closing ceremonies," he said. "There is such an energy.
I don't want to miss that."
reprinted with permission
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