Jul
25
Written by:
News Editor
Sunday, July 25, 2010 5:09 PM
by Matthew Claxton
If there was a gold medal to be had, the rowing crews from Vancouver Island got it.
Zone 6, Vancouver Island-Central Coast, dominated the rowing events Saturday in the Bedford Channel. Crews won gold in female doubles, gold in mixed quads, and gold, silver, and bronze in male doubles. Strong teams from Fraser Valley and Vancouver-Squamish had to settle for silver at best.
Jeff Birtwistle, a 15-year-old, was on the crew that took silver in the men’s doubles.
“It’s been a good experience,” Birtwistle said. “It’s kind of like a tiny little experience of the Olympics.”
Birtwistle is only in his second year rowing, but he’s thrown himself into the sport. The best things are “probably the people and the teamwork,” he said. In rowing, you have to work very closely with your partner or teammates to achieve a victory.
The highly skilled and competitive Zone 6 rowers are drawn from five different rowing clubs.
“I think it’s just natural with rowing being so popular in Victoria,” Robyn Willow, one of the team’s coaches.
Because Victoria is a hotbed of national-level rowing teams, the Zone 6 athletes compare themselves to high-level competitors.
“These young athletes are rowing side by side every day with Olympic gold medalists,” she said.