The New Italian Stroke

Italy’s technical director, Beppe de Caupa

The post-Olympic coaching reshuffle turned into more than just a small change for the Italian Rowing Federation when technical director of 11 years, Giuseppe La Mura was replaced by Guiseppe (Beppe) de Capua, earlier this year.

The hiring of de Capua is more like a return for the 57 year old, than a new face. De Capua has already been an Italian national team coach through the 1980’s and he worked with the Italian Federation until 1993.

De Capua remained a part of Italian rowing after 1993 and continued to coach, doing clinics around the world as well as at the Italian club level. ?Last March when it was proposed that I take the position (technical director), I knew that I was ready because I had stayed involved.?

But de Capua is not just stepping in to maintain the status quo, he’s making changes. ?I’m introducing a different training programme, a different rowing technique and different testing,? says de Capua. ?I put a lot of effort into the economy of movement of the stroke. I want it to be elastic, to have cooperation between the body, the boat and the oars. To do this it means developing a lot of feeling. A feeling of your body and feel the oars as an extension of the hands. It’s a relaxed movement, but you still pull hard, you are still aggressive.?

The Italian ?style’ has been known for its two part drive but de Capua wants to work towards a more fluid movement. ?I want to achieve the right pressure from catch to finish and to do this with harmony. It’s kind of a dance. You have to dance on the foot stretcher, you have to let the boat float.?

Although de Capua has had very little time as technical director, he says the athletes have been happy to make changes. ?Like all people when you propose something new they want to know if it works,? says de Capua. ?They need to feel the difference on the water.?

?The athletes say to me, ?we try and we see if we’re improving in the speed of the boat’.?

The biggest coaching influences for de Capua came from Thor Nilsen (?I was Thor’s right hand man for 10 years?). Italy brought in Nilsen, now FISA’s development director, in 1981 and according to de Capua, Nilsen helped increase the level of rowing in Italy. De Capua was also influenced technically by reading about Steve Fairbairn, the very influential British coach of the early 1900s, (?The gliding recovery, the fluent catch?).

?Rigging is also very important,? says de Capua. ?The boat needs to be set in the right way for each rower from a morphologic point of view.?

De Capua has brought some new coaches into the squad as well as retained others. His criterion is clear, ?As a coach you need to know how to transmit knowledge. You need special eyes, special feelings. You need to understand the eyes of a rower ? a coach can see the rower but can’t feel what is going on, a rower can feel what is happening but can’t see themselves,? says de Capua. ?My feeling is that the rower is the assistant coach. Still it is the coach’s responsibility to understand the rower and teach the rower how to analyse the feeling.?

As de Capua prepares for his first World Rowing Championships under the title of technical director, his record so far leading into the champs is already positive. At the recent World Rowing Under 23 Championships, Italy won medals in eight of the 19 events and four of them were gold. Italy finished third overall in the Rowing World Cup points table this season,  a result that included the men’s eight winning for the first time in a number of years.

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