Para-rowers excel at rowing champs

TWO rowers from Durban Rowing Club, Nosipho Mbatha and Douglas Hendrikz, recently took part in the South African national Rowing Championships and won a silver medal, despite beginning their rowing partnership quite recently.

They managed a time of four minutes and 56 seconds for the 1 000m race, which is excellent considering that Nosipho has been training for a relatively short time.

Nosipho is a leaner at the Open Air School in Durban and has only been participating in the sport for eight months. She was given the opportunity to become involved after Durban Rowing Club’s coach approached Open Air School specifically seeking a rowing partner for Douglas, who had been rowing alone for about two years.

Douglas had been unable to trial for competition on the international stage as his disability, a bi-lateral amputation of the legs, put him in the TA boat class, for which he requires a female partner.

Rowing for people with disabilities consists of three classifications: LTA – legs, trunk and arms – where the rowers have functional use of one or both legs, TA – trunk and arms – where the rowers have upper body stability but little or no function in the lower limbs, and AS – arms and shoulders – where the rowers have no lower body functionality and little or no trunk stability.

The LTA boat classes and the TA boat classes comprise mixed-gender crews, while the AS athletes row in single sculls for each gender. It is particularly difficult to find females with TA classification, hence Durban Rowing Club’s long search for Nosipho.

Nosipho and Douglas’s goal is to represent South Africa at the 2020 Paralympics in Japan and if their bid is successful it will be the first time that the country has managed to enter a TA boat.

Qualifying for Rio next year would be even better, however, despite their recent success and a huge improvement in their technical ability and boat speed, the pair knows that they need to go faster to make selection.

“Nosipho and Doug have really improved recently and their training is beginning to pay off, but with Nosipho being so new to the sport we have to set realistic targets. We also have a few challenges to overcome, but despite this the morale in the team is fantastic,” said coach Hilary Abrahams.

“At the moment we are having issues with oars breaking. We can’t afford to buy new ones and have to keep repairing the broken ones, which affects training, but the guys just get on with it on the rowing machines until the oars are repaired. We also struggle with getting wheelchairs to the water at low tide – sometimes the tide is so low that Doug’s wheelchair gets stuck in the sand. It’s an on-going frustration to which we haven’t found a solution, but we just have to try and work round it,” she said.

Nosipho and Doug train seven times a week and get up at 4am to be at the club for training at 5am. Twice a week they are back at the club at 5pm for an evening session.

“Everybody involved is really committed to getting Nosipho and Doug into the national team. Durban Rowing Club is keeping the para-programme going despite losing its funding for this year. Japan, here we come!” said Abraham.