Andrew Triggs Hodge is hanging up his oar. It will go nicely with his four world championships and three consecutive Olympic gold medals he collected during his international rowing career for Great Britain.
“The parts I enjoyed most about rowing was the rowing itself. Competition served as milestones for training and also it shone the light on the part I intrinsically enjoyed, the hard work and training,” he said in his retirement announcement.
Hodge will go down as one of the United Kingdom’s most accomplished oarsmen, with his career culminating last August as part of the Olympic gold-medal-winning eight in Rio. That marked three consecutive Olympic titles, following victories in the men’s four in London and Beijing. His world championship victories came in the four in 2005 and 2006, and the eight in 2013 and 2014. All told, Hodge raced in 14 different world or Olympic championships.
Although he wraps up his career on top, Hodge did not find immediate success when he began on the international circuit. His eight finished sixth at his first world championship in 2002, and when they placed ninth at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, he said it “seeded an anger and a ruthless desire to prove myself.”
In his announcement, Hodge said he’s looking forward to both family and professional opportunities that await him now. “With the impending delivery of our second child, the security of an exciting job, and the feeling that my body was getting to the end of its athletic life, Rio was a fitting way to complete my Olympic journey and end my career in rowing.”
Now the Oxford resident will turn his attention to assisting rowing startups in the U.K. and improving the environmental quality of a river he knows quite well: the Thames. He will put his master’s in environmental science to use on the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a project to direct sewage away from London’s famous river.
“As I leave the oar behind, rowing stays with me. I have been on the receiving end of so many volunteer hours to help me to where I am now, I aim to give that back.” Connor walters
The River Beckons
McGee Out at USRowing
The medal-free performance of the U.S. men in Rio has claimed its first casualty on the coaching side. In a tersely-worded statement on March 8, USRowing announced that men’s eight coach Luke McGee had stepped down and that a search was starting for a new senior men’s coach. Bryan Volpenhein, who guided the men’s four to a seventh-place finish in Brazil, remains employed with the national federation. “Luke has brought tremendous enthusiasm and dedication to his time with the men, and we wish him the best going forward,” said USRowing High Performance Director Matt Imes in an announcement.
Bishops in Boats
Although Ohio has seen more young women rowing in recent years, its in-state opportunities for continuing into college have been limited. The Ohio State University and the University of Dayton are the only Division I varsity programs for women’s rowing in the state, and Marietta College is the only other women’s varsity team in Ohio—until now.
Ohio Wesleyan University, a Division III college north of Columbus, announced in late February that it will add women’s rowing to its sport offerings. The program will operate as a club for the 2017-18 school year before the Battling Bishops crew receives varsity status the following year.
“We have a lot of people who have reached out,” OWU Athletic Director Roger Ingles said. “The first day…the phone was ringing like crazy.”
“It’s going to be something that will be well-received, both by the campus and prospective students. Hopefully it helps the sport to continue to grow.”
Primary among the tasks Ingles is busy with currently is hiring a head coach. Once that person is in place, decisions will be made regarding which equipment to purchase, in which conference to compete, and where to row.
“We’re really surrounded by a lot of different waterways,” Ingles said. “Right now, the Scioto River option is probably a good one for us.”
OWU is the first school in the North Coast Athletic Conference to add women’s rowing. Its Ohio DIII counterpart, Marietta, races in the Mid-Atlantic Rowing Conference, which is a potential option for qualification for the NCAA championships.
By adding women’s rowing, OWU can attract young rowers from places like Cleveland, Columbus, and other smaller rowing hubs that have popped up across the state. Ingles said it also makes the university an attractive option for students from New England, from where the school has traditionally drawn students.
Ingles said Mark Williams, head coach of Ohio State’s club rowing program, was instrumental in helping him understand what he needed to do to launch rowing at the university. He added that all NCAC schools are located within close proximity to a body of water, meaning more collegiate programs may be on the horizon.
World Indoor Sprints
Put this man in a boat. Texas state trooper Derek Peterson turned in a mind-blowing 1,000-meter time of 2:43.8—that’s an average split of 1:21.9—to finish first in the open men’s category in the World Rowing Indoor Sprints, a virtual indoor rowing contest run by Concept2 and World Rowing. Jordan Falcone of CrossFit Weddington put up the biggest numbers on the women’s side, covering the distance in a brisk 3:19.7. Modeled after the SkiErg world championships, the World Rowing Indoor Sprints saw competitors performing a 1,000-meter piece on the ergometer between March 10-12.
From Boat to Bike
Most athletes take the post-Olympic year off from competition to train at a more leisurely pace. Not Hamish Bond. The two-time Olympic champion and member of New Zealand’s vaunted Kiwi Pair is using his time away from the sport to try his hand in road cycling. And if the early results are any indication, the 31-year-old may be just as dominant on land as he is on water. At the Oceania Championships in March in Canberra, Bond finished an impressive third in the 41-kilometer time trial, just one minute behind defending champion and pro rider Sean Lake.
A Deal Down Under
What do Rowing Australia and Manchester United have in common? Both have inked sponsorship deals with global risk adviser Aon. Rowing Australia’s four-year partnership, which was announced in late February, sees Aon serving as the exclusive risk and insurance partner of the national governing body and naming rights sponsor for the Sydney International Rowing Regatta. In 2013, the company entered into an eight-year deal with Manchester United that included renaming their training facility as the Aon Training Complex. Aon also sponsors the club’s training uniforms.
Brambell Tapped for VP
Rowing Canada has tapped veteran Canadian lightweight Iain Brambell as its new high-performance director. The three-time Olympian and Beijing bronze medalist in the lightweight men’s four succeeds Peter Cookson, who now serves as director of sport and pathway development for the federation. Brambell has worked in sport since retiring in 2008, most recently supporting national sport organizations as a high-performance adviser at Canada’s Own the Podium program. “I am looking forward to working with our athletes, coaches, and staff to continue Canada’s tradition of excellence both on and off the water,” said Brambell.
Charting a New Course
For California Rowing Club coach Bernhard Stomporowski, things are looking up. When USRowing recently announced its new selection procedures, it was exactly the change he was looking for. And with the likes of 2012 Olympic bronze medalist Kara Kohler training at the club, there’s more than a little talent in the boat bays at the T. Gary Rogers Rowing Center these days.
“I was pleased when [USRowing] announced that [trials for all boats except pairs] would be at the same time,” Stomporowski says. “It also forces people to decide which boat class they want to race—in the past, you could go for the single, then the double, and then go for the quad. One person could block out three boat classes. Now people who want to develop have a better chance.”
It’s a start, but as far as strengthening the nation’s club programs as development centers, this is just the first step, says Stomporowski. “I don’t know what the new direction of the high-performance committee will be, but I hope they strengthen a little bit the club programs’ [role] in doing that.”
Far from waiting and reacting to whatever may come, however, Stomporowski has begun to take action in hopes of moving pre-elite sculling forward in the U.S. “I’m trying to get something together to avoid the same problems as we had the last four years, so I created something called the ‘Oakland Charta.’ It’s basically a written commitment, a gentlemen’s agreement, for all the clubs to provide their strongest rowers for the purpose of building the strongest [men’s] quad.”
In short, the idea is to build a way to pool athletes, coaches, and resources among clubs, making sure that the strongest rowers are in contention for the same boat, guided by a democratically-elected head coach drawn from one of the signee clubs. To quote from the document, “This Charta is created to find common ground of the signing head coaches of the participating rowing clubs to support USRowing in the attempt to qualify the men’s quad for the Olympic Games 2020.”
If it seems like it’s out of the blue, it’s not. For Stomporowski, the Charta is a direct response to the issues that he and his club faced in the last quadrennial, when CRC matched up against Craftsbury at trials—two talented groups facing off on home soil, ultimately putting each other at a disadvantage when the time would come to race internationally, regardless of which crew earned the honor of representing the U.S. (Craftsbury prevailed but failed to qualify for Rio.)
Also, the way the Charta is written provides the opportunity for any one of the signee clubs to potentially host camps and provide coaches, and offers some of the benefits of centralized training while respecting the athletes’ lives and living situations.
“Making a Charta, where everyone agrees, allows the rowers to train through the winter at their facilities and just come together for weekends [or training camps], not centralizing already in September. So we don’t have to take them away from their normal work and private life all the time,” he explains. “Of course, as the Olympics come closer, rowers will need to move to a [centralized training center].”
Stomporowski acknowledges it’s potentially a long shot to get clubs to cooperate this way.
“What can I do? If people don’t want to work together and the rowers don’t buy into that, then I can say, ‘OK, well, we will try to do this with the clubs who sign, and maybe we’ll even win—but even so, it will still not be strong if most people want to do it alone,’” he says.
It might sound strange, but some level of radical thinking is necessary to fix a system that hasn’t produced strong results at the international level in the men’s quad in recent years, and given the other changes taking place, now seems like a good time to experiment.
“We failed as clubs to work together [in the last quadrennial]. With this Charta I’m trying to bring some of the benefits of a camp, but with a little more freedom than what a funded boat has.”
This, combined with visits to college and university programs recruiting for an under-23 men’s quad program this year, has kept Stomporowski very busy this season.
“Of course, I’m competing with the under-23 sweep camp a little bit, but I think there are so many rowers out there who are [eligible] that for sculling, there should be no problem. I know that the best rowers will probably first go to the sweep camp, but there will be some who want to scull, and our hope is to get them into the program and produce a good result.”
Again, Stomporowski is thinking about development—not just of the athletes, but also the club system here in the U.S., which often gets overlooked when it comes to preparing athletes for the highest level.
“This is an issue for me. USRowing will put ‘Hans Struzyna, Washington.’ And I understand that, but the college, what do they get out of that really? They already have funding.”
Looking at press releases and media surrounding rowing in the United States, Stomporowski’s observation rings true. While many people know that Moe Sbihi of the British men’s eight rows out of Molesey Boat Club, seemingly very few people are aware of club affiliations among U.S. national team rowers.
While love for our alma mater may be uniquely powerful here in the United States, for rowing clubs that devote time and resources to developing athletes for the elite level, it may be time to give further credit where credit is due.
