Australian squad on new tack

The familiar names of the past like Drew Ginn and James Tomkins are not to be seen, but the entire Olympic silver medal men’s four are back together.

Francis Hegerty, Cameron McKenzie-McHarg, James Marburg and Matt Ryan in the men’s four will be the boat to show the way for the squad that is made up of many new rowers filling gaps left from post-Olympic retirements.

The women’s squad is very lean. Communications coordinator David Polglase commented that it is a direct result of many of the 2008 team not competing this year. This has left just two women in the sculling squad, last year’s Olympic single sculler Pippa Savage and this year’s top performing sculler domestically, Sally Kehoe. Kehoe, however, is recovering from a stress fracture so deciding on a single or double will come later.  

The rest of the women’s squad includes the 2008 Olympic pair of Sarah Cook and Kim Crow with the remaining boats (women’s coxless four and women’s lightweight double) made up of many new faces.

In the men’s squad the four will be joined by a quad, eight and lightweight four. Despite winning the men’s double at last year’s Olympics, no double has been selected this year.

“The men’s quad scull was probably the hardest crew to fill,” says Polglase. “There were a lot of guys going for the four spots and people including Brendan Long, who was in this boat in Beijing, missed out.”

In past years the Australian squad has competed at two Rowing World Cups and the World Rowing Championships. This year, however, the decision has been made to go to Europe only for the World Rowing Championships in Poznan, Poland.

National High Performance Director, Andrew Matheson said in Rowing Australia’s media release that there is a couple of reasons for choosing just one regatta, “The financial cost of taking teams away to tour is quite expensive, but we also have a number of major tours planned in the coming four years, so we want to keep our athletes as fresh as possible.”

Matheson says plans have been made to prepare for Poznan domestically, “The decision will not affect our preparations for the World Championships as we plan to stage our own regattas in Sydney to correspond with the three World Cups over the coming months.”

For a full team list including under 23s and juniors click here