Olympic Champion Cox - Men's 8

Olympic Champion Cox - Men's 8
OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS!!!!

Friday, February 29, 2008

School Program Launched!

The Canadian Olympic Committee in conjunction with RBC has launched a website called Olympic School which is a great resource for teachers, kids an schools. Currently rowing is the featured sport and I am one of the featured athletes. Not a big "feature" but nonetheless, there I am.

Encourage your children to use this website and check it out!

http://www.olympicschool.ca/default.aspx?PageID=1034&LangID=en

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Hello! Magazine Photo Shoot

This past weekend the Men's Eight showed up at the Empress Hotel, (best hotel in Victoria) for a suave photo shoot. HELLO! Magazine had approached Rowing Canada's marketing department about doing a 2 page spread pertaining to a pre-olympic issue and build up.
I was surprised at just how much time, money and effort went into this on their part. The clothes and stylist flew in from Toronto. The photographer and makeup girls were from Vancouver and the location had been pre-scouted a couple weeks ago. All that for a 2-page spread!

Upon arrival to the "Bengal Lounge" in the hotel we were greeted to a huge rack of clothes, shoes, ties & belts. Thank god there was a stylist deciding what we would be wearing. All of the clothes have yet to arrive in stores so this was mini preview of what was going to be "in" this summer. A couple of the guys dress pretty well....but for the most part we are just your normal dressers so this was different for sure!
I like the look that Kyle ended up with which she called "nerd/sheik". Basically and argyle sweater vest and white dress shoes, he wasn't too sure, but I thought he looked good!

Anyway, once we got our clothes on we sat in the makeup chair for about 10mins getting all kinds of crap put on our faces. No wonder ladies take longer than us in the bathroom!

The photo itself was done in front of a fireplace and had us all looking pretty sharp. Funny thing too was making sure there was room in the middle of us all for the "seam" in the magazine, something that didn't cross my mind but the pro's there knew to make sure it didn't land on one of our faces.

The whole thing took about 2.5 hours and was a good time for sure. It will be in either the July or August issue so make sure to grab it while at your local convenience store this summer!!!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Our "B" boat defeats Cambridge

Last week our "B" Men's Eight was over in England to race Cambridge University as a tune-up for them before the famed Boat Race with Oxford. Each year both Oxford & Cambridge do this to get experience racing a top international crew as their final preparation.
Our B boat is by no means a bunch of slouches.....they are fast and they proved it beating them by 1.5 lengths in the first 7 minute piece and then 4 lengths in the next 7 minute piece. It was kind of funny as the margins were reported in the paper as much smaller than they actually were but who cares....a win is a win. What ever makes them feel better.

The official boat race takes place on March 29. If you are interested in more info you can check out
http://www.theboatrace.org/

Here is a press release about the race.
http://www.sirc.ca/news_view.cfm?id=20001

In the past 4 or 5 years we have had many Canadians in the victorious boats and they have also held the title of president twice at Cambridge and once at Oxford over that time. With this being an Olympic year the level of oarsman is not nearly as high usual, but the British love this race nonetheless.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Invites and Awards

This isn't a new thing, but the invites and awards are continuing.

Whenever you win, people start calling letting you know you have been nominated for different awards and TV camera's want to come out and film us. Don't get me wrong...this is all cool, but we have to make sure that we don't A) let it get to our heads & B) get in the way of our training.

We recently attended an awards banquet here in Victoria where we won the George Hellar Award for outstanding team of the year for PacificSport. It was a great gala with all the local press there. That banquet was easy since it was in Victoria. The next two that we have been invited to are in Vancouver and Winnipeg! Vancouver might not seem far, but we are on the island and need to take the ferry and since the last ferry runs at 9pm that means staying overnight.
What we have decided to do instead is send two people to Vancouver for the BC Sport Awards where we are up for Team of the Year and two different people to Winnipeg for the Canadian Sport Awards where we are up for Partners of the Year.

Next week we have a photo shoot on our Sunday off with a prominent Canadian Magazine where they are looking to do a big spread on us. I will tell you who later....once we know all the details about the shoot. Also next week we are currently scheduled to meet with comedian Rick Mercer and appear on the Mercer Report. This will be shown nationally and should give us some great press.

We were also invited by Cambridge Boat Club in England to race them prior to The Boat Race on the tideway...all expenses paid, but instead we are sending our second crew who should give them a run for their money.

So as you can see.....between awards, invites, tv shows and photo shoots, we have to keep our eyes on the prize in 6 months and not get too caught up in all the hype and miss what got us to this point which is training our butts off!!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Training Going well in Oakland

We've been down here now for a week and training has been going well for most of the team. Some members have gone down for a few days with some kind of sickness/flu bug. It seems as though it hits someone new each day. Time for isolation rooms I think!!

The weather has been much better the last few days as we haven't seen rain since Sunday.(day off) Training on the waterway is definitely different than on Elk Lake. For starters it is salt water and absolutely filthy! We all try to make sure that if we get our hands wet.....which we obviously do, we don't touch our mouths or eyes. As soon as we get back to the boathouse everyone has a shower, washes up and uses disinfectant hand sanitizer. Apparently you can get a nasty staph infection if you don't. Since my clothes usually get wet, I only wear them once so I have a few "outfit" changes per day!

We generally row about 10km down the waterway and if we wanted to could row out out to the Bay Bridge or Alcatraz, but it is usually just too rough with all the container ships out there. I think we all had pretty much the longest row ever the other day. Two hours almost continuous, just 2 short 4 minute breaks. Talking for that long did start to get a bit much for the guys, but I suppose you could suffer through worse. (training meetings :))