2012 SilverSkiff Regatta in Turin

Photograph: Claudio Cecchin

The SilverSkiff Regatta in Turin, Italy, was back again after last year’s cancellation due to severe flooding. At this year’s regatta almost 500 single scullers had found their way to the waters of the River Po to race on the 11 km long course. The day before the SilverSkiff Regatta, a KinderSkiff Regatta for juniors was raced on a 4,000-metre distance by 200 youth scullers.

The men’s race was won by Jost Schoemann-Finck of Germany who had the fastest overall time at 41:39. Schoemann-Finck’s country woman Lena Müller won the women’s category at 47:11. The master I-category was won by 76-year-old Carlo Zezza of the U.S., this despite that he at one point flipped in his single scull. However, Zezza climbed back in his shell to win in his master class at 53:38. There was also an adaptive rowing category.

The scullers came from twenty-two different countries, FISA World Rowing website writes. To read more about the SilverSkiff Regatta, please click here. To get the results, please click here.

Great Story!

I just read about Gib North, who is young man and a member of the Chattanooga Junior Rowing Club’s adaptive rowing program. He is rowing with Katie Rouse in a double scull on the Tennessee River. It's a great and inspiring story. Read it here.

Interview: Nathalie Benoit - 'Perseverance is the first quality'

Nathalie Benoit, French silver medallist at the London Paralympics.
All photographs © by Didier Echelard.

HTBS’s Hélène Rémond has interviewed Nathalie Benoit, who took a silver medal at the London Paralympics. Hélène writes,



Nathalie Benoit was born in 1980 in Aix-en-Provence in South France and is a teacher at CNED (French National Distance Learning Centre) in Marseilles. She started rowing in 2008 at the Cercle de l’Aviron de Marseilles. Two months after she won her silver medal at the London Paralympics, she gives her impressions on the event and shares with HTBS readers what is her new goal. Nathalie has multiple sclerosis and is a para-rowing World Champion of the arms and shoulders single sculls category.

Why did you choose to practice rowing?
I chose this sport for the beauty of the movement, the physical side and also because it’s an outdoor sport which involves gliding on the water.



 
What are the values associated to the sport, according to you?
It involves surpassing oneself, a taste for pushing oneself, perseverance, respect of the opponent, respect of the environment, solidarity - for long boats.


When did you decide to take part in the London event?
I started thinking about it after my world title in 2010, in Karapiro, New Zealand.

What qualities are needed to make a good performance?
Perseverance is the first quality. You need to train a lot, of course, but that will make the difference.



What led you to success in London?
For months, I had done the race in my head. It helped me to get the medal. On the final day, this was exactly as I had imagined it. The crowd’s enthusiasm and the presence of my family and close relations helped me a lot, too.


What about Eton Dorney?
Aeolus must love this lake. It’s very windy. That was the case the week previous to the competition. The day before the first race, the lake was closed in the afternoon because you could not row. The day after, the wind stopped blowing and we got good conditions during the three days of competition.

What do the silver medal and the reception at the Elysée Palace [the residence of the French president] evoke?

The medal is the outcome of a four-year training period. It’s a beautiful reward for the work that has been done. The reception is the recognition by the State. This year, Olympic and Paralympic champions were invited at the same time and this is a strong signal which might change the way people look on disability.

What are the four dates that have marked your rowing career?
They are my four podiums. I have felt very different emotions at every single event. In 2009, that was my first title as vice World champion (in Poznan, Poland), it was a discovery. Moreover, it was the first world medal for para-rowing. In 2010 (Karapiro, New Zealand), it was an intense emotion to hear the national anthem and see the French flag raised above the others. In 2011 (Bled, Slovenia), I felt the joy of being qualified for the London Games, but also the deception of being on the brink of beating the Ukrainian Alla Lysenko, who is unbeaten to this day [Lysenko finished about 10 seconds ahead of Nathalie with a time of 5:29.99, the fastest time in Paralympic Games]. Finally, in 2012, it was an indescribable joy together with a feeling of relief.

What is your next goal?
My next goal is not to row fast, but to row for a long time. I would like to row from Paris to Marseilles. For the time being, we evaluate the feasibility of this project.

You will find more information on Nathalie's blog.

Ottobock will Fix it!

Danny McBride was the only oarsman representing New Zealand at the Paralympic Rowing Regatta at Lake Dorney.

While we admire the athletes competing at the Paralympic Games in London (and where the Rowing ended on last Sunday), it is easy to forget that these sportsmen and -women might be in special need of repairs, maintenance and technical support for their equipment. In rowing, it might be the rower’s boat or his or her wheelchair that he/she uses to get to the boat. Here is where Ottobock Healthcare steps in. This company provides technical service to the 2012 Paralympic Games, the website SourceWire writes in a interesting article. The website states that Ottobock Healthcare so far, after five days of competing, has completed 1,761 repairs.

One of the Ottobock Healthcare team members, Emily Harrison, tells SourceWire:

“The majority of the equipment we have repaired comes from athletes who are spending lots of time by the water. Damp conditions at the rowing means we have to provide regular maintenance to prostheses and wheelchairs such as wheel bearings and puncture repairs. As Technical Service Provider to the Games, our role goes beyond wheelchair, prosthetic and orthotic repairs. For example, we built an interface for a double amputee to prevent friction burns whilst rowing.”

Technical service by the numbers:


Total repairs to date 1,761

Orthotic: Day five 15, total to date 101

Prosthetic: Day five 18, total to date 247

Wheelchair: Day five 194, total to date 1,413

Number of athletes serviced: Day five 162, total to date 1,282

Number of countries serviced: Total to date 121

Read the full article here.

Results 2012 Paralympic Rowing Regatta

Great Britain takes gold in the Mixed Coxed Four (LTAMix4+) at the 2012 Paralympic Rowing at Eton Dorney: Lily van den Broecke (cox) [hidden], Pamela Relph, Naomi Riches, David Smith and James Roe.

Here is a link to the Results in the 2012 Paralympic Rowing Regatta at Eton Dorney. Click here.

The Indefatigable Jack Dearlove

Jack Dearlove at Marlow Regatta.

HTBS’s Tim Koch writes about the unknown hero, Jack Dearlove:

The 2012 Paralympic Game will undoubtedly be a great success and will certainly be remembered as a milestone in changing attitudes to disability. The widespread acceptance of Paralympians as ‘real’ athletes has happened so quickly that one does not have to go too far back for examples from a time when things were very different. An article by Neil Tweedie in the Daily Telegraph of 4 July does go far back, sixty four years in fact, but is still well worth reading. It tells the full story of a man who earned a small place in the history of rowing by coxing the British eight that won silver at the 1948 London Olympics. That man was called Jack Dearlove and he had one leg. Today the media and the Olympic public relations machine would be keen to extract maximum publicity from this ‘human interest’ story. Two decades ago things were very different.

Until the age of ten, Jack Dearlove was a gifted, sports mad youngster. However, in 1922 he was involved in an accident with a lorry which resulted in the amputation of his right leg.

Determined not to stay in a wheelchair and unable to get on with an artificial limb, Jack taught himself to walk on crutches. Tweedie quotes Jack’s son, Richard:

His parents were from tough no-nonsense backgrounds who had made their way in the world and Dad had been brought up in a similar way… He became amazingly agile and developed the ability to lead a pretty normal life. He was a good tennis player, brilliant swimmer and could water ski. He could drive too. And if the family went on a five mile walk, he was there…

Jack’s other son, John, says that as a child he never thought of his Father as disabled.

Jack Dearlove and the 1948 Olympic Eight. Won Silver.

Jack coxed for Thames Rowing Club and in 1948, at the age of 37 and with 20 years of rowing behind him, he was chosen to cox the British Olympic eight. His delight with what would undoubtedly be the pinnacle of his sporting career was  considerably reduced when he was informed that it would not be ‘right’ for a disabled man to take part in the parade of athletes at the official opening of the Games by the King at Wembley. He had to watch from the stands with the other 85,000 spectators so as not to cause ‘embarrassment’.

Jack was from a generation that did not expect compensation or pity for injury or stress or hurt feelings. He and his contemporaries accepted what life threw at them and made the best of it. His children did not know of his disgraceful exclusion from his rightful place among his fellow sportsmen until after his death in 1967. Son John says ‘He was utterly devoid of self-pity’.

Jack Dearlove and the 1950 Empire Games Crew. Won Bronze.

I do not suppose that Jack ever thought of himself as a pioneer. Had he ever considered it, he probably regarded himself simply as an athlete who wanted to compete making full use of whatever abilities he had. Today, the Paralympic Games exists precisely so that this may happen. We have come a long way since Jack Dearlove was relegated to the stands.

Pictures © John Dearlove

See also 6 September, 2012

Adaptive Rowing: Removing Barriers

Tim Koch, HTBS’s special correspondent in London, writes about the Paralympic Rowing Regatta which starts tomorrow, Friday:

Rowing will make its second Paralympic Games appearance starting on Friday, 31 August at Eton Dorney. Forty-six men and forty-six women will race 1,000 metres in four events, three of which allow for different ‘functional ability’. All the finals will take place on Sunday, 2 September.



It is likely that London will be the first Paralympic Games to sell out. As of 28 August, 2.4 million tickets out of a possible 2.5 million tickets had been sold. I had earlier assumed that I would be able to pick up tickets to the rowing at any time but this was a big mistake, it looks as though I will have to watch it on television.

The first ‘paralell’ games were held in Rome following the 1960 Olympics. These were inspired by the ‘Stoke Mandeville Games’ for disabled British war veterans which started in 1948 and held to coincide with the London Olympics of that year. Though it took forty-eight years for rowing to be introduced into the Paralympic programme, starting at Beijing in 2008, the international governing body of rowing, FISA, introduced adaptive rowing to the world championships in 2002. ‘Adaptive’ means that the equipment is adapted to the user rather than the other way around.

The sport is now practiced in 24 countries and Concept 2 and other companies have responded accordingly. In Britain the first rowing club for those with a disability was affiliated to British Rowing in 1998 and there are now twenty-one clubs that offer, or are dedicated to, adaptive rowing. In the years leading to Beijing, UK Sport gave £1.3 million to the Paralympic Rowing Squad and increased this to £2.3 million for London 2012. Eleven rowers are receiving ‘Athlete Personal Awards’ designed to let them focus on their training.

USRowing has twenty-five adaptive rowing programmes currently running in the United States and in 2010 the Head of the Charles in Boston included an adaptive event for the first time.



The four events at Dorney are men’s and women’s single sculls, mixed sex doubles and mixed sex coxed fours.

The single sculls are ‘AS’ class i.e. the rower’s impairment means that they can only use their arms and shoulders to move the scull. Stabilising floats must be attached to the riggers.

Mixed double sculls are ‘TA’ which means the trunk, arms and shoulders can be used.

In the ‘LTA’ mixed coxed four the rowers may use legs, trunk and arms as is usual but they qualify by having an impairment which affects their ability to row. According to the British Paralympic Association website:

All impairment groups except athletes with learning difficulties are eligible (but the latter) look set to compete in Rio after an (International Paralympic Committee) vote in 2009 reinstated athletes with learning difficulties in four sports including rowing.

The cox is not required to be disabled and no more than two of the rowers may have a visual impairment. In the much fancied British four, James Roe and Naomi Riches are partially sighted, Pamela Relph has arthritis and David Smith has a fused ankle.

I do not know what the view of the Paralympics is outside of Britain but the excitement and anticipation here is palpable. In a very short space of time I, like many others, have changed the way that I view disabled people and sport. The Paralympians themselves have brought about this advance by their obvious total commitment to their training and to their ultimate goal. Many people no longer view them as ‘disabled athletes’, but see them simply as ‘athletes’.

2012 Paralympic Rowing Regatta

Helene Raynsford of Great Britain.

Paralympic racing starts on Friday 31 August, at 9:30 a.m. at Eton Dorney, outside of London. Finals will be raced on Sunday 2 September. A total of 23 countries will be represented by 108 Paralympic rowers competing in one of the four Paralympic boat classes. FISA writes in a press release:

The four Paralympic boat classes are the AS women’s single sculls (ASW1x), the AS men’s single sculls (ASM1x), the TA mixed double sculls (TAMix2x) and the LTA mixed coxed four (LTAMix4+). There will be 12 crews racing in each of these four events, representing a total of 48 boats.
Brazil and Ukraine have qualified crews in each of the four Paralympic boat classes, with six nations having qualified three crews each.

Qualification began in 2011 at the World Rowing Championships, where the top eight finishers in each boat class qualified a spot for their country at rowing’s second ever Paralympic Games. At the Final Paralympic Qualification Regatta this year in May, a further two Paralympic spots were attributed to the top two crews in each event. The final two entries in each event are invitational and have been allocated by the Bipartite Commission composed of representatives of FISA and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

FISA’s “adaptive” rowing, has been part of the World Rowing Championship programme since 2002 and, in 2005, the IPC announced the inclusion of rowing into the Paralympic Games. At the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, rowing’s first Paralympic Rowing Regatta was staged. FISA has “adapted” the boats so that the adaptive rowers can compete in the same sport with the same field of play and rules.

2008 Paralympic Champion in the AS men’s single sculls, Tom Aggar of Great Britain, a former rugby player, will be aiming to win gold once again in front of a home crowd. He has not lost a single World Championship since appearing on the international rowing scene in 2007.

In the AS women’s single sculls, only a few 2008 Paralympians will be lining up once again in London. Beijing silver medallist from Belarus, Liudmila Vauchok, will aim for the podium once again. Vauchok is also a multi Winter Paralympic Champion. Strong contenders will be 2009 and 2011 World Champion from Ukraine, Alla Lysenko, as well as 2010 World Champion and 2009 and 2011 world silver medallist Nathalie Benoît from France.

In the TA mixed double sculls, China was the Paralympic Champions in 2008. In London, the Chinese athletes racing this year will be different from those who won gold in Beijing. Xiaoxian Lou and Tianming Fei have only competed once internationally before these Paralympic Games, when they became World Champions last year in Bled, Slovenia. They will be facing Australia (whose Kathryn Ross rowed to silver in Beijing) and Brazil (whose Josiane Lima won bronze in 2008).

The reigning World Champions in the LTA mixed coxed four are Great Britain, having won gold in 2009 and 2011 and silver in 2010. Their London line-up is different to the one that won bronze in Beijing with only Naomi Riches continuing in the boat. Their toughest competition is expected to come from Canada who were World Champions in 2010.

To view the entries and provisional timetable, please click here.

Stay tuned here and www.facebook.com/WorldRowingAdaptive for up to the minute information and photos from the regatta.

Glide along like a Swan

Tom Aggar of Great Britain will compete in the men's adaptive single sculls event in the upcoming Paralympic Games at Eton Dorney. He will defend his championship title from the 2008 Paralympic Games. Aggar is also a four-time World Champion in the boat class (2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011). Photo: British Rowing.

A week from today, on Friday, 31 August, the Paralympic Games are starting in London, with the rowing at Eton Dorney. Read more about the athletes and the regatta on FISA’s website here. Adaptive rowing has been around for quite some time now. Here is an article about a ‘disabled rowing’ regatta held in Oxford almost three decades ago. Author is Chris Dodd, famous rowing historian at the River and Rowing Museum, rowing journalist and writer, who had this piece published on 19 September, 1984, in his newspaper at the time, The Guardian. Thank you to Chris for allowing HTBS to re-publish it.

19 September, 1984

Chris Dodd

Rowing is a sport that could offer much to the disabled. Here Christopher Dodd reports on a British initiative to grant them freedom of the river:

Trevor Cox was penalised for using his leg to move his sliding seat during a recent sculling race on the Isis. It’s the only leg he’s got, but his two-legged opponent had no power in either of his. They were taking part in Britain’s first regatta for the disabled at Oxford, a remarkable day of courage and enjoyment. No one bar Bob Glendinning, who is partially blind as a result of multiple sclerosis, had been in a boat three months before the event.

A rowing club has been set up by Oxford and District Sport and Recreation Association for the Disabled (Oxrad) and Richard Yonge, a researcher at the Radcliffe and past president of Oxford University Boat Club. Two years ago Yonge helped out at the United States Rowing Association’s [now called USRowing] all-Disabled regatta in Philadelphia, where he saw amputees, paraplegics, the blind, victims of spina bifida, cerebral palsy, and the mentally handicapped propelling twin-hulled Rowcats. One of the athletes told him: ‘The good thing about rowing is that on land we are so ungainly when we try to get about, but on the water we just glide along like a swan. Nobody knows you are disabled. In fact, you sometimes forget it yourself.’

Yonge realised that a programme could be run easily in Oxford, where there is water on the doorstep and an army of able-bodied rowers to help out. Last May sculling began for those who can swim in Westminster College’s pool using a single hulled Playboat, a stable learning craft developed for beginners and loaned by the Amateur Rowing Association, ARA [now called British Rowing].

Graham Jones, another past president of OUBC, did some of the coaching. ‘They learned to manoeuvre the boat much quicker than most able-bodied oarsmen,’ he says. ‘There’s only room to take three strokes in the pool before you have to turn round.’ Most are out on the river after three sessions in the pool. At the regatta two of the competitors were using regular sculling boats, and there was a crew event in coxed tub pairs in which able-bodied oarsmen teamed up with disabled rowers. The blind were steered by towpath runners with megaphones, ARA officials officiated, Blues and college oarsmen provided extra manpower, and the watermanship on display was better than that showed by most of those trying their hand at punting nearby.

The Americans have been running programmes for the disabled for some time, and it is to them that we can look to see what can be done. Doug Herland was born in Oregon in 1951 with four broken ribs, a broken collarbone and pelvis. He suffered brittle bones and lived with almost constant breakages until he grew to 4 ft. 8 in. The Catch 22, he says, is that when his bones solidified in puberty there was no muscle to protect them.

A particularly serious swimming accident in his late teens left him in a wheelchair and walking with sticks for five years. But in August he won a bronze medal at the Olympic Games, wedged into the bows of a boat on his back and steering two giant oarsmen in the race of their lives. Herland walked from his boat to have his medal hung round his neck – after seven attempts to get a US team place. His high school baseball coach had suggested coxing to him. Later, he took up weight training and sculling, and he hasn’t used sticks to walk since then.

‘Rowing is excellent for the disabled,’ Herland says. ‘It causes no jarring in the joints.’ After working as a janitor while unpaid rowing coach at the University of Michigan he set up a programme for mobility impaired people called Freedom on the River.

‘If you want to organise something, get a paraplegic,’ he says. ‘If anyone is an expert on organisation, it is a quadriplegic. He has to be, just to go somewhere or do something.’ He has been trying to get Rowing in the Mainstream afloat as a countrywide programme for the able-bodied and the disabled, so far without success. But the schemes that have started have worked wonders for some of the participants.

Herland has sat on a Rowcat with a quadriplegic with no use in his arms and helped him twice up the pool by doing the puling. ‘On the third trip I took my hands off the oar. He realised that I wasn’t helping him. His eyes were full of wonder. “I’m doing this,’ he said. That guy has rowed three miles by himself and no longer has weights on his oars to get the blades out of the water.’

Richard Yonge is blessed with an able body and an enthusiasm for jarring people into joining his project. Oxrad has raised about £500 of the £700 they need to buy their own Playboat, and Falcon Rowing Club has offered them a roof. They hope to stage a demonstration at Stoke Mandeville’s pool soon, and Yonge wants other places with water, pools, a boat, and sympathetic rowers to get started so that they can come and race at Oxford next year.