Memorable week-end for rowing club

Press, 9 March 1984, Page 8

Memorable week-end for rowing club

By

TIM DUNBAR

Nobody from the Canterbury Rowing Club will begrudge Duncan Holland if, as seems quite possible, he takes a break from coaching next year. Mr Holland, a former New Zealand representative who was forced out of rowing in 1981 because of a back injury, is completing his third season of coaching with the Canterbury club, and this was by far his most successful. “Phenomenal” was the word he used to describe the club’s best day at a national regatta, the five titles it won at Lake Karapiro last week-end. Three of the titles were in the elite championship class, advancing Mr Holland’s tally of green coats to four, though as yet he does not have one hanging in his wardrobe.

As well as coaching the women’s champion eight, the men’s champion lightweight eight, and the women’s coxless pair, Mr Holland had a hand in the guidance of the other two winning Canterbury crews — the women’s intermediate eight and the men’s intermediate lightweight four.

Altogether Canterbury had 10 crews in the finals for the five firsts, four seconds, and one third. In the Centennial Oar, presented by the Canterbury club itself in 1961, it finished third with 38 points, behind

Waikato (53), and Cambridge (39). As chief coach, Mr Holland deserves to take most of the credit for Canterbury’s success, but he made a point of stressing “the whole team effort in coaching.”

Don Macintosh assisted Mr Holland in the coaching of the women’s intermediate eight and Phil Sutherland coached the novice women’s four, which finished second in its final and made up half of the successful intermediate eight. “We tried to build up a pattern in the club of all rowing one way and training one way,” Mr Holland said.

Chris Duncan, who stroked the champion lightweight eight, had made an important contribution to the physical output of the lightweight squad, according to Mr Holland.

As far as next year is concerned Mr Holland said that his plans were “very fluid,” and implied that he was thinking about taking a rest from coaching.

“But I hope to get a New Zealand crew of some sort this winter,” he said. Mr Holland, the national women’s coach for the last two years, is one of several well-performed rowing men who has put his nomination forward to coach a crew at the Los Angeles Olympics in July. Failing that, he is keen on

coaching One of the New Zealand crews to contest the trans-Tasman series in Australia in August and September — be they lightweights, colts, or women. Mr Holland has already shown his “special interest” in coaching lightweights and he singled out one of them, Matthew Buckeridge, the bow of the eight, for his individual performance at the nationals. “He has only just turned 16 and before this season his only rowing had been half a season as a novice.”

And, remarkably, the intermediate women’s eight, drawn from a number of other crews, had had only two training rows before the regatta. “Their fifth row together was in the final.” That winning intermediate women’s eight, which included four novices, was made up of Ann Hatch (stroke), Philippa Baker, Helen Pepperell, Ingrid Beijen, Philippa Meachem, Dianne Pepperell, Michelle Bednarek, and Mary-Anne Cameron with Michele Fitzgerald steering. Butler and Baker were also in the champion women’s eight.

One definite “first” on the list of winners at a national regatta were the interesting combinations in the Canterbury champion men’s lightweight eight, and the cham-

pion women’s eight. While Chris Duncan stroked the lightweight eight, his wife, Jacqui, stroked the women’s eight. And the respective coxswains, Jason and Leanne Prebble, were brother and sister.

The boating order of that lightweight eight, which won its race by less than a canvas, was Duncan (stroke), Malcolm Fraser, Craig Hobbs, Glen Hardwick, David. McGregor, Roger Murphy, Andrew Skelton, Buckeridge, and Prebble (coxswain). Skelton, a gain from Christ’s College, also stroked the winning intermediate lightweight four, with Nigel Cummins, McGregor, and Buckeridge in the crew.

Another Canterbury crew, the champion lightweight

coxless four of Duncan, Fraser, Hobbs, and Hardwick, went desperately close to a title, losing by less than a metre to North Shore.

The North Shore lightweight four was coached by the world championship gold medal coach, Brian Hawthorne, who was sitting with the Canterbury coach. “He turned to me and said: Tn that race there were no losers ,” Holland said.

Chris Duncan, the stroke, had lost about 3kg as the result of a stomach bug the previous week and admitted

to being “incredibly stuffed” as a result. But the four Canterbury rowers in that crew at least had two hours rest before the lightweight eights final

which had just as close a finish. “We had our blades' in the water at the right time,” Duncan said. The eights race carries no trophy, but Duncan has now discovered there was supposed to be one for the fours title which he, Fraser, Hobbs, and Hardwick won the previous year. He suspects that North Shore, the winner in 1982, might still have it.