World Masters Regatta 2023 – South Africa
Dan Bartlett reports from the 23rd edition of the World Masters Regatta in Tshwane, South Africa.
It was the first ever international rowing event in Africa, taking place on the Alan Francis Rowing Course, which is also the home of the South African national Squad.
The course itself is on the Roodevalley dam within a nature reserve.
Going to any regatta as a single sculler on your own can be daunting, and as I sat there in Heathrow I questioned if I was doing the right thing leaving my family to fly to the other side of the world to race.
I shouldn’t have worried; the whole experience was incredible.
I’m not actually a sculler, spending my whole rowing career in sweep boats, but it was while coaching Max and George to do Doggetts that I decided to test myself out racing in the single. I’ve always loved South Africa and two and a half years ago I set myself the goal of getting to this regatta. A wise man had once told me, “Train with young men, race against old ones” and with the training squad that we have built it certainly helped a lot.
I had decided to fly out to Johannesburg four days before the regatta to try and adjust to the altitude (Jo’burg is 1753m above sea level, London is 11m) and more importantly get use to the boat that I was hiring.
I was more nervous about the boat that I would get, than the actual races themselves. The main boat manufacturers had all been fully booked since May and since I had only really decided to go after winning at the European master’s I felt that I had to go. I had organised to hire some boats from a local firm. They had assured me that the scull I was hiring was pretty new. Needless to say, the boat that was assigned to me was more than a few years old, too heavy for me and had seem some action in the Black Sea. Considering that I have grown up rowing at Poplar and the quality of boats we use to have, I thought I could work with it.
If only it had stayed that way. For various reasons I ended up racing in what was my third boat of the week, which had seen action at Trafalgar.
The issue when hiring a boat at these regatta’s is that you only get them for an hour. Within that time, you must adjust feet heights, stretchers, gates (you can’t change the pitch or span) and of course blade lengths and then race.
My first session on the course was a real lesson in altitude training. Simple warm up’s and 250 meter starts felt like 2K race pieces and my lungs were struggling to get enough air in. My average heart rate for a 10K steady session was 150.
The racing itself was incredible. To row up and down a course where you could see Zebra on the banks rather than shopping trolleys or Lime bikes was a novelty. There was also an announcement you don’t hear at Henley, “Can people stop feeding the monkeys”!
I competed in three finals in the end.
- Masters A coming 3rd
- Masters B coming 2nd
- And my own category and the race I went for, Masters C coming 1st.
The rowing community really is an amazing thing. I met so many people that knew Poplar and wanted to include me in everything. But special thanks go to the members of Viking Rowing Club from Johannesburg, who really went out of their way to make sure I felt welcome. It really was a special moment when their entire club cheered me on in my last final.
My rowing career also came full circle when I met the South African Olympian who inspired me to get back into racing 30 years ago, who then beat me two years in a row racing in Goblets at Henley 15 years ago, only then to meet again at the first International regatta in Africa over dinner.
The whole week was an amazing experience with too many stories to say on here, but from the springbok that would pass my front door to the constant 80’s music I will never forget it.
