Nick Westby: Rowing towards a bright future if £1m funding gets green light

Let me begin this column by explaining the reasons for the need for the stabilisers you see in the accompanying picture, as the image has caused much merriment among my chums on the sports desk in the past days.
Yorkshire Post's Nick Westby, gets expert advice from Leeds Rowling Club's learn to row coach David Cottrell on Roundhay Park Lake. (Picture: Jonathan Gawthorpe).Yorkshire Post's Nick Westby, gets expert advice from Leeds Rowling Club's learn to row coach David Cottrell on Roundhay Park Lake. (Picture: Jonathan Gawthorpe).
Yorkshire Post's Nick Westby, gets expert advice from Leeds Rowling Club's learn to row coach David Cottrell on Roundhay Park Lake. (Picture: Jonathan Gawthorpe).

As a complete novice at the helm of a boat, the agreement I struck with Leeds Rowing Club when I embarked on a participation feature with them at Roundhay Park was that under no circumstances should I capsize.

It was not an insurance issue. It was one of bravado, and of self-preservation. As hot as the weather has been, I had no desire to tumble sideways into the deep, murky blue of Roundhay Lake.

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Fortunately, and in my defence, the stabilisers were not optional.

They are a necessity for anyone heading out on a practice boat.

Rowing is about staying afloat, being at one with the water, and much like riding a bike, you have to stay upright to progress.

But from the very start you require a little help, hence the extension to the hull of the boat provided by the stabilisers.

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Before you even get near a boat, though, the first act of the opening lesson of the club’s six-hour Learn to Row scheme is on the rowing machine in their little clubhouse by the side of Roundhay Lake.

This should be a doddle, I thought. No stabilisers needed here as I bounded onto the seat, unhooked the handle and got cracking.

David Cottrell, the Leeds club’s Learn to Row instructor, stopped me before the whirring of the machine could build.

I had committed my first error, one that every person who rows a boat sees commonly in gyms up and down the country.

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The actual rhythm of an oar striking the water and being lifted looks nothing like that replicated regularly on a rowing machine.

The correct stroke is more fluid, more deliberate and contains more component parts.

Fortunately, I got the hang of it pretty quickly, as I sat amongst the club rowers who blasted out a few hundred meters before heading out onto the lake in their two-man or four-man boats.

After 15 minutes of practice and armed with a new stroke, we headed to the water, which is about the time a pleasurable summer’s evening became a worry. For I had left my comfort zone behind me and as David and I walked to the pontoon with me carrying the front of the boat and he the back, the nerves began to sink in.

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I have never been a great sportsman, hand-eye co-ordination fails me, and I’m too heavy-footed and heavy-handed. Ham-fisted was the way one schoolteacher put it.

So as we lowered the boat into the water, one stabiliser balanced on the pontoon, the other threatening to submerge, I was asked to climb into the boat and drop gracefully onto the seat.

I got half of this routine right. The drop was executed from a little too high and I jarred every bone in my body. I did at least find the seat with my posterior, but as I sat there, gritting my teeth as the hurt subsided, that was little consolation.

And yet, that was as harrowing as it got. It turns out, I’m not that bad a rower. Because we were only concentrating on rowing with the arms and not the legs, such are the many movements you have to get right, I found the actual process not as difficult as I thought it would be.

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Funnily enough, I was better at rowing in circles than I was in a straight line, not that that should mean anything, but at least I was moving. And not capsizing. Once we added the raising of the knees to the moving parts of the rowing stroke, I started to get a little unco-ordinated.

“You’re doing fine,” bellowed David from the riverbank, but I was not convinced.

After a few rows around the water near the boathouse – including a nervous brush with Leeds Canoe Club who were playing a little kayak water-polo – I made it safely back to the pontoon before tumbling out of the boat about as gracefully as I had entered it.

My body was screaming. I had used muscles I didn’t know I had. My shoulders felt like they were about to burst out of my t-shirt.

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I was knackered – but I had survived, and I owed a big thanks to Leeds Rowing Club.

I was fortunate enough to be given a go at their Learn to Row programme, a scheme for which there are 300 people on a waiting list. Leeds Rowing Club is bursting at the seams. Since first hitting the water in 2006, they have grown exponentially to the point where they have long since outgrown their current boat house. The club has 110 members, and double that number on a waiting list to join.

They have eight four-man boats, five doubles and six singles, which means at most they can have 48 people on the water, less than half their membership.

“It’s fantastic that we’ve got all this interest, it’s just unfortunate we can’t accommodate everyone,” says David.

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To that end, Leeds Rowing Club are saving money to build a new clubhouse. They have identified a site and have been offered a long-term lease by the Canal and Rivers Trust at Thwaite Mills on the Aire and Calder Navigation Canal.

The one small snag is they need £1m of funding. They have the backing of British Rowing and the University of Leeds and have a bid in to Sport England for funds. Everyone is waiting on one organisation to give the green light, then it will all fall into place.

They are also tapping into the commercial world, trying to lure corporate backers to help nudge them over the finish line.

Leeds is not alone. Clubs across Yorkshire are reporting great interest in their sport.

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And at Leeds Rowing Club they are confident they will get there, and when they do, the floodgates will open on a vast surge in membership, from seasoned rowers to complete novices – a category I no longer fall into.

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