A crop of emerging talent was identified as the 2014 Canadian rowing championships concluded with hundreds lining the shores of Elk Lake on Sunday watching the finals.
The championships were also a triumph for Martin McElroy, who seems to have placed his stamp on the Canadian heavyweight men’s program.
McElroy, who replaced the legendary Mike Spracklen as high performance director of that program, faced one of the most difficult recent challenges by any Canadian national team coach in any sport.
“It’s a learning process. Mike [Spracklen now coaches the Russian national team] is highly respected. But I’m not Mike and Mike is not me,” said McElroy, now a year and a half into the job following the controversial decision by Rowing Canada to cut ties with Spracklen.
Yet, how do you follow a man whose record of achievement includes guiding the Canadian men’s eight to Olympic gold medals at Barcelona 1992 and Beijing 2008 and silver at London 2012 and also the four to silver at Athens 2004 and Silken Laumann to her lionized comeback at Barcelona?
McElroy is doing it by quietly building on the existing foundation.
“The rowers train hard. The reputation of Canadian rowing [around the world] is of a tough bunch of guys who race all the way to the line,” he said.
And it’s not as if McElroy hasn’t had success of his own, coaching the Great Britain men’s eight to gold at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics and most recently running the Irish rowing program as director of performance before coming to Victoria to take over the Canadian men’s team.
“It’s been a reset [after the Spracklen era],” said McElroy.
“I’ve been challenged by it. These are a great bunch of athletes and I’m enjoying it.”
The immediate goal is preparing for the Toronto Pan Am Games next summer and the 2015 world rowing championships in France which follow, and which are also the qualifying regatta for the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.
But McElroy is also building for the post-Rio era and pointed to the likes of Tim Schrijver and Martin Barakso, a graduate of Brentwood College rowing collegiately for Princeton, as two of the winners Sunday at the nationals (in men’s pair) that have him encouraged for the future.
Also winning national finals Sunday were Rob Gibson, among the six returning Olympic silver medallists from London 2012, taking the men’s single. Lindsay Jennerich, 2014 world championship silver medallist and a big medal hope for Rio 2016 in the lightweight double along with fellow-Victorian Patricia Obee, won the women’s lightweight single in a pulsating final with Obee second.
Rowers didn’t compete in their regular crew boats but instead in singles and pairs to give national team coaches a better look at individual talent and technique.
The list of winners — Men’s pair: Martin Barakso & Tim Schrijver, National Training Centre Victoria; Men’s single: Rob Gibson, National Training Centre Victoria; Women’s pair: Jennifer Martins & Susanne Grainger, London, Ont., Training Centre; Women’s single: Carling Zeeman, London, Ont., Training Centre; Lightweight men’s pair: Brendan Hodge & Eric Woelfl, London Training Centre; Lightweight men’s single: Mark Henry, London Training Centre; Lightweight women’s single: Lindsay Jennerich, Victoria; AS men’s single: Loren Pearson, Rowing BC; AS (arms/shoulder) women’s single: Elsa Lalonde, Ontario; TA men’s single: Cameron Sinclair, Ontario; TA (trunk/arms) women’s single: Shafiq Felicia, Rowing BC; LTA men’s 2x/2-: Richa Herlinveaux & David Blair, Ontario; LTA (leg/trunk/arms) women’s 2x/2-: Alexa Meiklejohn & Lianne Gibson, Ontario.
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