US Rowing + Great Coach = Olympic Medals
Well, the first two parts to this equation has happened here in the United States. My former coach from Brown University, Steve Gladstone, who now coaches the University of California Berkley has hired Tim McLaren to head the California Rowing Club. Steve has long wanted to see a more successful U.S. rowing team at the World Championship and Olympic Games, will his wish come true?
In October the 300 millions American will be born. That is a lot of people. Yet the United States have had in comparison to smaller rowing countries a deplorable result of international rowing medals per capita since the beginning of the modern Olympics. US sculling boats have a catastrophical record in comparison to its sweep rowing program. The explanation for this is that all Universities with a crew specialize in fours and eights.
I often hear that the US is too large for its own good to crank out medals. Too many coaches are teaching different techniques and when the time comes to form the national team there is hardly any time left to practice before the major international competition. Mike Teti the US head coach, figured out how to shrink the vast US territory into Princeton New Jersey. He has created an environment for sweep rowing talent to train together and to find local jobs. His system is working. The result is that the US is producing medals in the men’s and women’s eight.
Princeton, New Jersey… sounds nice, but between November and April it is C O L D and definitely not the environment that I would choose to train in. So I wonder where the rest of the people are who are interested in sculling at the international level. If they are not the runts of the Mike Teti sweep program, they are scattered throughout the US. There seems to be a Boston and Seattle enclave for sculling programs, but I am not going to vaste out time talking about those obscure programs. The bottom line is, there is no successful small boat US flotilla that can make a dent in the medal count at the Olympics and world championships.
Now the US has Tim Mclaren! Right from the get go I can tell you that I am a believer in Australian coaches. My own Aussie coach Marty Aitken helped me figure myself out to win Gold and Silver in Atlanta and Sydney. If you are an Australian you ought to feel good about what I am going to say. You people are roughly 20 million or less and your per capita medal count is ridiculously high at the Olympics. Jeez, I wonder how that is possible… Simple, Aussie’s have good athletes and great coaches. Marty was so methodical with my training that I NEVER had a doubt that I couldn’t do the job at the major yearly rowing championship. He introduced me to methodical lactate testing and cross training that kept my thirst high for on the water rowing.
Lactate testing is arguably a foreign concept for rowing training here in the US. Yet, today it is a simple process to monitor lactate levels in athletes and benefit from its information. It boggles my mind that the high performance committee of the US Rowing Federation has not gotten a clue yet and informed the thousands of rowers and hundreds of coaches about its benefit to avoid overtraining. When it comes to sculling styles there seem to be as many as there are coaches here in the US…
BUT! Other countries better beware and not get too comfortable things are going to change. Tim Mclaren has a proven Olympic record and is about to build a system that will crank out highly trained athletes who understand the subtleties of training and rowing small boats, which in turn will create superb large boats. My prediction is that we will see a rapid convergence of rowing talent to the California Rowing Club. Heck, if I were still in competition mode, I would migrate to see Tim… I guess I am not too old for that yet… Hmmm this makes me think… In any case I am wishing Tim and his family a great time.
Xeno Muller, Olympic gold and silver medalist, indoor rowing, rowing technique.
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