Rowing has long been a passion of mine. It requires a high level of both physical and mental strength, as well as a trust and reliance on the members of your team. I’ve taken so many life lessons from my experiences on the water, and the satisfaction of competing and pulling out a solid performance is exhilarating.
I competed in rowing as a student at the University of British Columbia, and I went on to join the Canadian National team, competing in the 2001 World Rowing Cup and the Nations Cup in Italy, where our team won silver in both events.
I’ve maintained an active interest in the sport, and this fall, I had the pleasure of competing in the annual Head of the Charles Regatta in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a US Rowing-sanctioned event. Along with four other members of the Ex Nemo Rowing Club made up of mostly Harvard alumni (I joined while studying at MIT), I participated in the Men’s Senior Master Fours (50+) event on Saturday, October 19th. We raced against 30 other teams, and I’m very proud to say we finished in a respectable 6th place.
The Fours event features a bow-loaded coxswain, meaning four of us rowed with the coxswain steering while huddled tightly in the bow. The four legs of the race took us under six bridges over the Charles River, where spectators were lined up to view the event. The full results can be seen here.
This is a still of our team taken from the live stream of the race on the Head of the Charles Regatta’s YouTube channel (you can barely see David Fuller, our coxswain, in the front):
Along with David and myself, our team members were Greg Kaplan, Craig Webster, and Anthony Mets. The name of our club, Ex Nemo, comes from the Latin phrase “Ex Nemo Non Feces”, which means, essentially, ‘Don’t take s*** from anyone’. The motto imbues our rowers with a stubborn resilience that serves us well on the water and keeps us feeling highly competitive – an essential ingredient for a successful rowing team.
The Head of the Charles Regatta was established in 1965 and is now the world’s largest three-day rowing event. This year, more than 12,000 athletes participated in over 73 different race events.
The 6th place result was a wind in our sails, and we’re highly motivated to continue training and perform even better next year.