The Post-Olympic coach reshuffle

As it the case for most Olympic sports, National team rowing programmes invariably centre around the four-year cycle (or for this past Olympiad, make that five years). This means that following the Tokyo Olympics national rowing federations did a reset and a re-think and a re-shuffle.

The upshot; coaches go on the move.

Take Paul Thompson. The former Australian, Thompson had a long stint coaching for British Rowing before heading to China for the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics. Thompson has completed a full circle by returning to his original country. He is now Rowing Australia’s performance director, taking the place of Bernard Savage who moves on to Hockey Australia.

Australia has had other shuffles at the top. With head coach Ian Wright leaving, Rowing Australia’s new Men’s Head Coach is Rhett Ayliffe. Lyall McCarthy comes into the role of Senior Coach, filling the role that was vacated by Andrew Randell – McCarthy is best known for his coaching Kim Brennan to a 2016 Rio Olympic gold in the single sculls.

Ian Wright, formerly a New Zealand Olympic rower and Rowing New Zealand coach leaves Australia to head back to Europe. Wright did a stint in Switzerland leading up to the Rio Olympics and then went to Australia where he took the men through to the Tokyo Olympics. Wright is now returning to Switzerland where he takes the position of head coach.

Great Britain came away from the Tokyo Olympic with their lowest medal ranking ever from an Olympic rowing regatta. Not surprisingly this meant a reshuffle of the rowing high performance team. Paul Stannard has taken over the position of men’s head coach. He’s been working for British Rowing since 2003 and leading up to Tokyo, Stannard coached the silver medal men’s quadruple sculls. Louise Kingsley comes into the role of Director of Performance. She is the first woman to hold this role.

Former British men’s head coach, Juergen Grobler joins the French Rowing Federation. The former German national team rower, Grobler will be France’s high performance consultant.

Over to Canada, Phil Marshall has been named as head coach. Most recently Marshall coached the Canadian women’s pair through to Olympic bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. Gold medal winning Canadian women’s eight coach, Michelle Darvill leaves Canada and heads to the Netherlands. She will coach the Dutch national team women.

And this takes us to the Netherlands where coaching changes have been quite dramatic. Darvill is helping to fill a spot left by long-term Dutch coach Josy Verdonkshot. Also coming into the Netherlands from another country is Francesco Fossi. The Italian Olympic rower leaves behind a coaching job in Italy to move to join the rowing staff for the Dutch Federation. Darvill and Fossi will work with new head coach Eelco Meenhorst.

Verdonkshot will cross over to the United States where he has been named as USRowing’s Chief High Performance Officer. Verdonkshot got the role over a very impressive list of candidates which included Great Britain’s five-time Olympic gold medallist Steve Redgrave. Redgrave most recently has been working with the Chinese national team in the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics.

Also leaving the Dutch team behind is Mark Emke who heads to Norway to take the place of Johan Flodin. Part of the appeal for Emke was the chance to work with para rowers. This will include women’s PR1 single sculling Paralympic gold medallist Birgit Skarstein. Flodin crosses the border and heads to Sweden where he will be working for the Swedish Olympic Committee as Sports and Development Director.

Back to the comings and goings in the United States, women’s head coach Tom Terhaar is heading to college sport to coach at Columbia University. Terhaar led the US women to 11 consecutive world and Olympic titles during his tenure.

In Germany, Brigitte Bielig steps into the role of national team head coach. She fills the gap left by Christian Felkel. Originally from Germany, Felkel spent 11 years as Rowing South Africa’s national coach. He then moved to British Rowing in 2008 and coached national teams until 2021 when he moved back to Germany. It was announced today that Felkel will be returning to the GB Rowing Team as its new Technical Efficiency Specialist coach.