Don Rowing Club of Mississauga

A True Rowing Story

My race plan was simple: row as hard as possible, adapt to the weather, and try to medal. It felt more like late fall than late summer in mid September 1976. The rain was on and off with temperature in mid-teens (degrees of Celsius). The cross wind had picked up since the early morning heats and my coach warned me at the push-off to stay in my lane during the race.

As I was paddling up to the 1500 m mark I was checking out the other five scullers heading up to the start of our race: I could recognise two familiar faces from my morning heat, the other three were strangers coming from different parts of the country to the Nationals. They all looked very young and eager to race just as I was. With only a few races under my belt, and in my first competitive season, I could feel huge butterflies rising up in my stomach as we were lining up for the start of our 1x junior novice race.

Everybody called our head coach The Boss. He often acted as if he owned the club and all of us in it. His passion for rowing was huge and contagious. He learned how to row in the Navy. After a brief and successful racing carrier in sweep boats, he turned to coaching. A bear of a man, six feet four and over 220 pounds he had an eye for rowing talent and its rapid development. In a preseason during our 5AM practice, The Boss would be wearing a black heavy winter coat lined with fake fur to keep him warm on the river. From the distance in the morning haze he’d resemble a giant crow sitting on top of a miniscule fibreglass motor launch chasing our fleet of mostly doubles, pairs and singles up and down the river. Since eighthly percent of our club were male junior rowers, the junior crews were basking in attention of The Boss at all times. He stayed on top of our personalized training schedules in all seasons, from 5AM to 5PM daily, six days every week. The
more talent and determination one would display in a practice the more attention he’d get from The Boss; we called this ironically the “catastrophe of success” since he kept raising the bar on us constantly to the point of making our fastest junior crews race senior crews from other clubs over the 2k course at the senior Nationals (and sometimes even win!).

For the past year I was practicing mostly in a heavy wooden skinny single that was relatively easy to balance but heavy to carry. As the months went by, I was getting stronger and the wooden shell was getting easier to carry up the steep concrete ramp and into the boat house. I even started racing in that old shell with some success, but the medals eluded me. Back in those days lighter composite shells were few and it was a privilege to use them in practice. After I had won my first single race at a qualifying regatta a few weeks before the Nationals, The Boss assigned me to the white composite racing Pirsch for practice and racing. This was a major step up! Being at least 10 pounds lighter than the wooden shell, the Pirsch felt like a torpedo compared to my old wooden single as I happily practiced in it with a pair of wooden tulip oars preparing for the Nationals.

“Êtes-vous prêt? – Partez!” and my big race was on! The first 1k went by in a flash. I drifted out of my lane two or three times only to be quickly flagged back by the umpire launch. In the last 500 m I could vaguely hear The Boss yelling from his bike: “Finish now, up the rate”! The finish line was fast approaching as I was racing past the stands. My arms, legs and lungs were burning but I was trying to finish strong, ignoring the pain. As my bow ball was about to cross the finish line, I turned my head to the right towards the umpire tower, my left oar hit the big yellow buoy, causing my shell to tip badly and to throw me overboard! Still out of breath but freshened up by brisk lake water, I emerged from under my shell and grabbed on to the rigger for life. Treading water and waiting for the safety boat to slowly navigate towards me I felt a huge wave of embarrassment and trepidation... With some help I climbed into the safety boat
wondering if I had placed at all. During the short ride to the shore I was told that, unofficially and luckily, my bow ball had crossed the finish line just before the accident and that I had probably placed third. It sounded almost too good to be true.

The Boss was waiting for me at the dock grinning and wearing his black coat as a cape. It was raining again and I had shivers all over my body. He shook my hand, congratulated me on my now officially announced bronze, then took his black coat off his shoulders and put it on mine. I was touched by this unexpected fatherly gesture! He even shoved some change into my wet hands and demanded I immediately got a cup of hot tea at the restaurant near by the lake. “Take it with some rum – that’ll warm you up!” he added smiling (he never smiled!?). By the time of the medal ceremony I was a bit tipsy from all the “tea-toasting” at the bar. I’ve also acquired a new reputation of the “best swimmer” of the regatta… Most importantly, the somewhat lucky medal won that day opened up my appetite for the sport or rowing and encouraged me to stick with it until today.

Marko Saban
DRC, 2009