FILE PIC. Naydene Smith and Lee-Ann Persse of South Africa compete in the Women's Pair semifinal during day five of the 2013 World Rowing Championships on August 29, 2013 in Chungju, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
National rowing coach Roger Barrow said the crews would be assembled from scratch despite the gold medal in the men’s double sculls and the men’s heavyweight pairs bronze.
When the elite rowing squad start training in October all the crews would be dissolved and rowers will be back in the single sculls to fight for their seats in the different boat classes.
“We pride ourselves on bringing the guys back to earth again where no-one is any boat now, we are back to the grindstone and you’ve got to do all the training,” Barrow said.
Past performances and reputations have little currency within the national rowing squad as current form dictates a rower’s place in the pecking order.
“If you find yourself in a boat, good luck, but I think training is almost harder than the racing, it is almost like you go into the world championships enjoying it because you’ve done all the hard work.”
Olympic gold medallists James Thompson and John Smith became South Africa’s first world championships in the Dutch capital, rowing a world best time of 6:05.36.
What made their accomplishment even more impressive was the fact that they had to make the transition from sweep-oar rowing to sculling within a matter of months.
The gold medal they won at the London Olympic Games as members of the lightweight fours with Sizwe Ndlovu and Matt Brittain involved sweep rowing.
It is a type of rowing where the athlete has one oar held with both hands while with sculling the rowers have an oar in each hand.
“It hasn’t been done, it is often done with athletes going from sculling to sweep, but from sweep to sculling, it hasn’t been done before — not what I’ve seen,” Barrow said.
“They were still in the lightweight fours last year and it was only in February this year that I made the call that there wasn’t enough depth in the four.
“So we went with the double and all credit to these two, they just had an amazing race, I think technically they still have a long way to go, they haven’t yet mastered the two oars.”
Also getting in on the action at the world championships is rowing stalwart Shaun Keeling, who formed a successful partnership with Vincent Breet to claim bronze in the men’s heavyweight pair.
It was an extraordinary world championships for the South African team, qualifying four Olympic-class boats into the A-finals, while the men’s coxed pair of David Hunt and Lawrence Brittain, with Willie Morgan as coxswain, also finished in the top six in their category.
The South African women’s pair of Lee-Ann Persse and Naydene Smith finished sixth in their boat class.
The women’s lightweight doubles sculls crew of Kirsten McCann and Ursula Grobler showed true potential as they just missed out on a podium spot after a fourth-placed finish.
“The lightweight women’s double, I think that is the big boat for Rio, they’ve had a great regatta,” Barrow said.
Barrow said it was a matter of success breeding success as Thompson and Smith inspired the other rowers, while there was an overall positive attitude within the squad.
He admitted that their unyielding training methods proved to pay dividends which included two high-altitude training camps on the Katse Dam in Lesotho.
“The way that our training programme is structured, we are racing every week within the squad so we are trying to teach the guys how to be under pressure and still come out,” he said.
“So we are always practicing this close boat proximity of the guys being right there and to step up a gear.
“You could see from certain boats in the heats and the semis that the guys would be next to somebody and we would row through them.”
The gold medals at the Olympics and the World Championships was a case of
deja vu with the two crews surging towards the end of the race.
“We are getting a reputation in world rowing when you come to the last 250m and if a South African crew has got contact then you’ve got problems,” Barrow said.
“I’ve seen it with other coaches, like with the lightweight doubles when the race was unfolding, the French coach went crazy telling their crew to get rid of the South Africans.
“If we are sticking to them we’ve always got these good sprints and I think that comes from the programme.”
– Sapa
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