Athens Olympics Highlighted at FISA Coaches Conference

The venue was Athens, Greece and the 2004 Olympic Games were in the forefront of discussion at FISA’s 32^nd World Coaches Conference. More than 150 people attended the weekend conference with representatives from more than 27 nations. Topics ranged from the general to the specific and from new research to reevaluation of established ideas. 

David Tanner, Great Britain’s international performance director, who as ?coach in the spotlight? was the main presenter. Tanner became the man in the middle fielding a wide range of questions on the British elite system. 

But it was next year’s Olympic Games that attracted much of the attention. After strong winds marred the Olympic test event, the Junior World Championships in August this year, the chance of a re-occurrence at next year’s Athens Olympic regatta was the subject of one of the discussion sessions.

Coaches and representatives from FISA’s competitive rowing commission considered a number of options if wind becomes an issue in August 2004. These included starting one hour earlier in the morning or alternatively for afternoon sessions beginning one hour later. An eight lane system was also tabled for consideration as was a shortening the racing distance to 1’000 metres as a ?very, very last option.? A visit by conference attendees to the Schinias Olympic rowing venue provided the context. 

A gala dinner capped off the weekend with presentations of this year’s FISA Awards. FISA’s Development Director and recipient of FISA’s Distinguished Service to Rowing medal, Thor Nilsen described his work with rowing’s development programme and coach of the year, Italy’s Giuseppe La Mura received his award.  Both male and female athletes of the year, Australia’s men’s pair and New Zealand’s women’s double sent their acceptance speeches by video as they were unable to interrupt training schedules.

During the Saturday dinner each table of coaches made their predictions for the 2004 Olympic gold medal winners and the combined results were:

M1x                 Germany
W1x                Bulgaria
M2x                 Slovenia
W2x                New Zealand
M4x                 Italy
W4x                Germany
M2-                 Australia
W2-                 Great Britain
M4-                 Great Britain
M8+                Canada
W8+                Romania
ML2x               Italy
WL2x              Germany
ML4-               Denmark

Next year’s conference will be held in Gifu, Japan from 4-7 November 2004.