Lightweight rowing stands out in awards

Hirling a World Champion at 21

Varga of Hungary

As rowers from around the world receive honours for their sporting successes, the lightwight version of the sport has been highly represented.

Tamas Varga and Zsolt Hirling, winners of this year's lightweight men's double, came out on top again with the popular vote in Hungary. A nationwide poll of readers of the top national sports newspaper ?Nemzeti Sport? chose Varga and Hirling as the Best Team of the Year. Of the 50,000 votes the rowing duo won an impressive 48.5 percent to easily clinch the top spot.

Canada's World Champion lightweight women's quad headed the list of awards for Canadian rowers by winning the Rowing Canada Aviron International Achievement Award. Mara Jones, Tracy Cameron, Elizabeth Urbach and Melanie Kok also received a second award in recognition of their gold at this year's World Rowing Championships. The lightweight men's quad and men's four, both bronze medal winners, were

Biesenthal, Kok, Jones, Cameron and Urbach receive honours

also honoured.

Sarah Outhwaite picked up the praise and the Female Rower of the Year from Rowing Australia for 2005. Outhwaite raced both the women's pair and eight this season winning World Championship gold in the eight and silver in the pair. Outhwaite is also the only remaining member of the ill-fated Olympic eight that finished sixth at Athens. This makes her, at the age of 22, one of the senior members of the women's squad.

Adaptive single sculler Dominic Monypenny was also honoured as Rower's Rower of the Year (nominated and voted by the athletes). Monypenny won gold in the arms only single (AM1x) at the World Rowing Championships in his first season on the Australian national team.

Italy's Carlo Mornati became Knight of the Water, the top award for Italian rowers. Stroking the men's eight Mornati was part of the first Italian eight in 18 years to win a World Championship title when they finished with silver at the World Rowing Championships. Mornati's 13 year international career includes two World Championship titles and three Olympic Games.

Laurent Porchier of France adds the Fair Play Award for 2005 to his list of accomplishments which include Olympic gold from Sydney in the lightweight four and seven World Championship medals, two of them in 2001 when he won the lightweight men's eight and took silver in the lightweight four. Porchier is now a volunteer coach and treasurer of his club and takes part in anti-doping clinics.

Bette with wife, Caroline

France's Jean-Christophe Bette received an award from the French Sport Academy. Bette raced to gold with Porchier in Sydney and the most experienced member of the lightweight four that became World Champions this year.

The only crew from Finland at this year's World Rowing Championships picked up double accolades. Sanna Sten and Minna Nieminen are now the Finnish Crew of the Year and the Female Crew of the Year. Sten and Nieminen broke a medal-winning drought for Finland when they won bronze in the lightweight women's double at Gifu.

Philippine rowing hero of this year's South East Asian Games, Benjamin Tolentino will be honoured by the Philippine sportswriters' association and receive a monetary reward and recognition by his government. Olympian Tolentino usually competes as an open-weight but went lightweight for the South East Asian Games winning the lightweight single, double and men's pair.

Meanwhile across in Ireland Richard Archibald, Paul Griffin, Tim Harnedy and Eugene Coakley of lightweight men's four fame received the Texaco Sports Star Award recognising their World Championship silver medal. This is the top sporting award in Ireland. The crew also won the Irish Amateur Rowing Union President's Prize for 2005 as the top rowers in the country.

The New Zealand public could not ignore the four World Championship wins at Gifu this year and the achievement was acknowledged by a number three ranking of the best sporting moments of 2005 in New Zealand as "the magnificent gold seven."

welcome home for New Zealand team

The seven athletes, Mahe Drysdale (M1x), Nathan Twaddle and George Bridgewater (M2-), Nicky Coles and Juliette Haigh (W2-), Georgina and Caroline Evers-Swindell (W2x) and coach Dick Tonks will now wait for potential honours in the national sports awards scheduled for March.

In the United States Michelle Guerette and Josh Inman picked up the USRowing 2005 Female and Male Athletes of the Year awards respectively. Guerette broke a US medal winning drought in the women's single when she finished third at this year's World Rowing Championships while all 203cm of Inman sat in six seat of the gold medal men's eight. The winners were decided by Guerette and Inman's rowing peers and coaches.

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