Canterbury wins first lightweight title

Press, 7 March 1983, Page 23

Canterbury wins first lightweight title

By

TIM DUNBAR

Canterbury, the oldest rowing club in New Zealand, won a championship lightweight title for the first time

in the national regatta at Lake Horowhenua on Saturday.

The crew to bring the club its first gold coats was the champion lightweight coxless fours of Chris Duncan, Malcolm Fraser, Glen Hardwick, and Craig Hobbs. Superstitition played a little part in the crew’s mighty victory over the hotly favoured North Shore crew which included the two lightweight internationals, Richard Redpath and Ross Angus. The night before the final, the stroke, Duncan, shaved off his beard. It was, he said, an age-old tradition. The title the clean-shaven lightweight ended up with was his first in 11 years trying, in any class.

The crew’s chances of the title looked exceedingly remote after a shocking start on Saturday. On just the second stroke Canterbury caught a “monstrous crab” which completely stopped the boat and cost two vital lengths. But by the 500 m mark Canterbury was second alongside North Shore and over the next 1000 m these two crews hauled in union.

“We took the race through the middle stages,” said Duncan. The crew, probably helped by the following conditions, rated 36 or 37 through the middle stages and 39 to the finish as it went to nearly a length clear of North Shore.

There was no time for celebration after the win for one crew member, the No. 2 man, Hardwick, who had to jump straight into the intermediate lightweight coxed four for another race. That crew, too, did well with a second placing behind North Shore.

After the glories of Saturday the Canterbury camp was hopeful of another win in the champion lightweight eights yesterday, but that

crew, with the new "gold coats” in the stem, did not fire and had to be content with third. In the championship lightweight singles final on Saturday the little Cambridge sculler, Steve Ryan, who is known among' rowers as “Carbon Fibre,” was very impressive as he regained his title from Waihopai’s Alan Rowe. Ryan, who weighs only 66kg, is light even for the lightweight class, which has an upper limit of 72.5 kg for single scullers. Last year he went to Europe under his own steam and gained valuable experience. Canterbury’s big hope, Dale Maher, in a national final for the first time, sculled quite well to make third place but was still a little disappointed. “I thought I could do better than that,” he said. Ryan was “flying,” according to the lean Maher, but he had expected to give Rowe a better fight. The Canterbury club also had some good results from its novice women who finished second in both the coxed fours and the double sculls.

Avon had its best performances in eight-oared events with the intermediate eight holding out the Blenheim club, Wairau, (which seemed plagued by second placings at the regatta) in a great finish. Both crews cleared out from the rest of the

field. The crew of Mike Rickerby, Martin Bamford, Andrew Parky, Simon Botherway, Robbie Morrison, Trevor Edwards, Garth Bradford, and Mike Westna (bow), with Scott Rodgers coxing, had more on their minds than just the race.

Just three weeks before the nationals the Avon crew’s original No. 7 man, Neil Pepperell, had been killed in a freak accident at work when he fell through a skylight. At the 1982 championships Pepperell had won medals in both the novice pairs and the eights. When the pressure was really on 200 m from the finish a crew member called out: "This one’s for Neil.” That, according to the successful coach, Doug Burrowes, took the crew to first place. Mr Burrowes is making a nice habit of producing winning crews at Avon. Last year he also picked up titles with the novice eights and pairs. Four of that novice eight were boated in the intermediate crew this season.

Another eights title might well have gone Avon’s way had it not been for a crab caught on bow side by the senior eight stroked by Mark Simmons, in the last few hundred metres. But it would have been tough to hold out the strong West End and North End (Dunedin) crews, which finished ahead of Canterbury. The senior eights was one of the more eventful races on Saturday’s programme of 28 finals. It eventually got under way properly 45min late after a long delay because of a collision between Waikato and Wellington at the start which left the Waikato crew with a broken blade and then another delay after a false start. West End won in a superb time of smin 58.605, a very fast time for a senior-class crew.

On Sunday eight gutsy oarsmen from the recently “revived” Nelson Club brought home the club’s first title in any class since it won the novice fours in 1958.

The Nelson novice eight does not own an eight and it had never even trained in one before the championships, for which a boat was borrowed from Porirua. The crew made the ninth and last place in the final only after a re-row and then it bad to race in lane No. 9 which has no starting pontoons and gets the toughest deal as far as the water is concerned. After the race, which Nelson won from Wairau, the coxswain, Paul Drysdale, got the traditional ducking but there was an interesting addition with the coach, Jack Collin, getting an unscheduled ducking as well. “I’d been expecting that,” he said after he clambered out of the murky waters of Lake Horowhenua.

The winning crew was Peter Lucas, John Price, Danny Guard, Norman Strawbridge, Mike Menzies, Gary Ivamy, Tony Mills, and Donald McNeill. Two members are aged only 17 and three are lightweights.

Nelson, which has recently undergone a resurgence of interest; contested no national regattas after 1970 until last year. It is, incidentally, the fourth year in a row that the novice eights has gone to the South Island. Wairau, which again has a strong group of novices, won in 1980 and 1981 and Avon won the event last year.