Displaying items by tag: Coaches Conference

4th November 2012

Limerick Hits Mark With Well-Run World Rowing Coaches Conference

# ROWING: The World Rowing Coaches Conference in Limerick over the weekend saw Irish delegates mix with the men and women who guided crews to glory at London 2012 in a well-run event. The presentation by Thomas Poulsen of Denmark was highly-praised, and there was a thought-provoking talk by German team psychologist Dr Annelen Collatz. Gearoid Towey spoke about the importance of managing the transition of athletes to life away from top-class sport and Martin McElroy also made a presentation.

The year of the Olympic Games is a good time to hold this event and delegates got a feel of being in the engine of world rowing as top coaches and mentors thrashed out proposed changes to rules which can be made early next year. A proposal to put the onus on each athlete to reach a set weight in a lightweight boat was controversial and discussed at length on Saturday evening.

The World Rowing Awards for 2012 were presented to the South Africa lightweight four (male crew of the year) and Britain’s women’s double sculls (female crew of the year). The coach of the year was Dick Tonks of New Zealand and single sculler Huang Cheng of China took the award for adaptive crew of the year. Di Ellis was given the award for distinguished service to rowing.

At the conclusion of the business side of the event, John Boultby, the chairman of Fisa’s competitive rowing committee, said the logistical organisation in Limerick had been “superb”.

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The most significant events for the Half Ton Class has been the annual Half Ton Cup which was sailed under the IOR rules until 1993. More recently this has been replaced with the Half Ton Classics Cup. The venue of the event moved from continent to continent with over-representation on French or British ports. In later years the event is held biennially. Initially, it was proposed to hold events in Ireland, Britain and France by rotation. However, it was the Belgians who took the ball and ran with it. The Class is now managed from Belgium.