OTHER THAN THE DATE ON their birth certificates, the average master's rower has little in common with an athlete like James Tomkins, the Australian champion training for a sixth helping of Olympic glory in Beijing, when he will be 43 years old.
But the club master and a growing number of aging Olympians do have this in common: They just can't seem to stop rowing.
Take Romanian Elisabeta Lipa, who retired twice during a 20-year competitive career that ended with the 39-year old once again on the top step of the Olympic podium in 2004. With eight Olympic medals-five of them gold-she is the most decorated Olympic rower of all time, and the rowing world's quintessential comeback artist. But she has plenty of competition.
After winning his fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta games, Sir Steven Redgrave famously said that if anyone saw him near a boat again, they should shoot him. Only a few months later Redgrave was back in the boat, training for Sydney, where he won a record fifth consecutive gold medal at age 38.
Redgrave then retired for good, but that Sydney campaign was less an anomaly than a harbinger of things to come. There was once a time when elite rowers had to stop competing and start a career.
But as rowing becomes more lucrative for high-performing athletes, they are able to continue in the sport for as long as the competitive flame burns. And in champions like the five profiled below, that flame burns very long and very brightly. In their persistence is a lesson for all masters athletes: It is never too late to follow your dreams.
KATHRIN BORON
Germany's Kathrin Boron has hardly had a break from rowing since she started as a 14-year-old. Twenty-one years later, with eight world championship gold medals and four silvers to go with her four Olympic wins, she tops the list of most-medaled female rowers. (Lipa leads in Olympic hardware, but Boron has more world titles.)
The 37-year-old has only taken one year off from competition, for the birth of her daughter, Cora, in 2002. Even then, long-time coach Jutta Lau designed a program for the determined Boron so that she could continue to row through her pregnancy. After winning her fourth Olympic gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics, when she was 35, Boron said she had no plans to retire. "I hope for more medals in the future," she said simply.
Her career began in East Germany, where government talent scouts identified her via the "height triage." Her stature marked her as a potential rowing champion, and she moved to a sports school to develop her considerable talent.
She won her first international medal as a junior in 1986, and 21 years later, Boron still rows with an unrivaled passion and singularity of purpose.
Boron's distinctive bent-armed, round-backed rowing style is easily detected no matter her choice of boat, be it the single, double or quad. In all of these disciplines she has World Championship medals.
Boron will go to the Beijing Games as a wise 39-year-old who has never lost an Olympic final. Perhaps that explains her perseverance. "I always say success is the best motivation," she says.
ESKILD EBBESEN
He is already the most successful lightweight rower in the world, but Denmark's Eskild Ebbesen is back for more. In 2004, after winning the last of his three Olympic medals and six world titles with the seemingly unstoppable Danish lightweight four, Ebbesen thought he was ready for a change of pace. He already had a young family and a growing business. His focus had changed.
The break lasted just two years. In 2007 Ebbesen reappeared on the international scene. The 35-year-old wants another shot at Olympic glory. "I found out that I still have a lot of energy to train and compete in other sports, so I decided I still have the energy to take the pain of hard training," he says.
"With that, of course, the Olympics is a very big motivation," says Ebbesen, who carried the Danish flag at the opening ceremony in Athens.
After Athens, Ebbesen stayed active by competing in mountain bike and road cycle racing, duathlons and triathlons. "If you are a good rower you have a short journey to being pretty good at these sports," says Ebbesen, who finished second in Denmark in the duathlon.
He hadn't lost much in the way of fitness, but before returning to full-time rowing training, Ebbesen had to do some domestic negotiating. "The deal was I would go to Athens and after that, we all agreed I would stop," he says. So Ebbesen had to find a way to train without losing any family time.
"It has worked out well. I stopped working. I got the possibility of quitting the firm and use my time on my family and rowing. That was a big part of the decision-that there would be enough time to train and still time enough to be with my family also."
For most of his rowing years Ebbesen trained under the legendary Danish lightweight coach Bent Jensen. Jensen now coaches in Canada and Bent Fransson has taken over Jensen's role in Denmark. Fransson describes Ebbesen's power as his main strength. "It's his will and the fact that he is strong," says Fransson, "but above all his ability to feel how a boat moves and to teach it to others." | | That will be an essential quality, as Denmark attempts to build a new lightweight four around Ebbesen. It's a new situation for the Dane, who in 11 years with the "Golden Four" never failed to medal in world competition, including two gold and one bronze medal in Olympic competition.
At the 2007 world championships, Ebbesen stroked the new-look Danish four to an unaccustomed sixth-place finish. With the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, though, Ebbesen's confidence in his teammates and himself is unshaken. "I'm heading back to go for the gold," he says.
JÜRI JAANSON
Estonian Jüri Jaanson's rowing career stretches all the way back to the Soviet sports machine. In 1988, at age 23, he competed for the Soviet Union at the Seoul Olympics. Sixteen years later in Athens, rowing in his fifth Olympics for his native Estonia, Jaanson finally won an Olympic medal, a silver in the single sculls. He was 38.
Jaanson has rarely taken a break. He is well-known for racing at many of the European winter head racing events including the Silver Skiff in Italy and the Netherlands' Hell of the North.
Part of Jaanson's staying power in the sport has been due to family support. His wife, Tatjana, rowed internationally for the Soviet Union, and is now the Estonian coach. She sometimes oversees Jaanson's training.
The Athens success has spurred Jaanson, and after those Olympics he declared that his goal was Olympic gold in Beijing.
After spending most of his career in the single, Jaanson has now found success in team boats. He won World Championship bronze in the men's quad in 2005, and in 2007, Jaanson struck World Cup gold in the double before capping the season with a bronze at the world championships.
JAMES TOMKINS
When Australia's James Tomkins announced that he was coming out of retirement and returning to rowing with his sights set on his sixth Olympics, the Australian press went wild with speculation.
How could a 43-year-old fare against competitors 20 years his junior? The speculation has not subsided despite Tomkins showing in physiological testing that he is every bit as strong as he was in the past. "I guess when you feel that you are still on top of your fitness and enjoy rowing, that is enough motivation to continue competing," Tomkins says.
"Rowing is such a good sport no matter what age you are. You can be as young as 12 to row a boat, and there were a couple of 60-year-olds competing at the Australian Rowing Championships this year," he says.
"It truly is the sport for all ages." At the 2007 Australian team trials Tomkins teamed with 23-year-old Sam Conrad to finish second behind the current World Champions, Drew Ginn and Duncan Free.
As always, the 6'6" Tomkins looked good doing it. The Australian boasts a beautiful stroke, a picture of length and seamless power that coaches from every part of the world hold up as the paragon of sweep rowing technique.
He's a natural, but experience counts for something as well. Tomkins began rowing 27 years ago as a high school student, and was selected to his first national team in 1985. A year later he earned a World Championship gold in the men's eight. Tomkins has since won World Championship titles in all five of the sweep rowing events.
Tomkins is known for disappearing from the international rowing scene following the Olympic Games and then showing up a year or two later, still in top form. In between, Tomkins keeps active by surfing, running after his growing family of three girls, and pursuing a successful career in banking. "Never give up," he says. "And don't set your goals too low."
LESLEY THOMPSON-WILLIE
Canadian coxswain Lesley Thompson-Willie will more than likely be the first rowing athlete ever to be named to seven Olympic teams. She has set her sights on the 2008 Olympic Games and, if selected, Thompson-Willie will be just shy of 49 years old in Beijing.
After her sixth Olympic team and fifth Olympic appearance in 2000 (she missed the 1980 games due to the U.S.-led boycott, in which Canada also participated) Thompson-Willie called it a career. After all, six Olympic teams and four medals, including gold with the Canadian eight in 1992, is nothing to sneeze at. But then discussions with women's coach Al Morrow five years later got Thompson-Willie thinking.
"I missed the sport," she says. "It's an exciting time to be in rowing, with scientific developments coming out and training methods getting better. I believe we (Canada) have the capability of going quick."
Morrow has worked with Thompson-Willie for many years and believes it was her competitive drive that brought her back for a shot at Olympics number seven. "She is probably one of the most thorough and meticulous people I have ever met," says Morrow. "She has the complete confidence of all her crews that she is doing her job as well as can be done."
Like any member of the national team, Thompson-Willie has to earn her spot and she realizes there are no guarantees despite her former record. Firstly Canada has to decide to boat a women's eight and that depends on the depth of talent amongst the rowers. Then the eight has to qualify for the Olympics. |
