For rowers, the two kilometre test is the cornerstone for evaluating whether an athlete has the aerobic endurance and raw physical power to be competitive at a high level. Nervous energy permeates the room in the build-up to the test; weeks and months of early starts and gruelling training culminate in less than ten minutes of all out effort. During the six or seven minutes it takes an athlete to cover the distance on a rowing machine, the expectation is that they will push themselves to complete exhaustion – collapsing, vomiting and fainting are not uncommon.
Emotions can run high in the aftermath of a 2k. Sheer exhaustion is mixed with elation for those that achieved, or even exceeded, their expectations, but for the athletes that miss their targets it can be devastating. Your time can potentially make or break dreams of rowing at a high level. For some Edinburgh University Boat Club (EUBC) rowers, tests over the past weeks have been draining the hopes of rowing competitively at university. The EUBC is actively reducing the size of their senior squad to twenty male and twenty female athletes, meaning that those that don’t make a 2k threshold set out by the coaches in recent tests will find themselves out of the performance side of the club.
Men’s coach Dale Flockhart explained the cuts to athlete numbers as a new strategy to ensure that resources such as coaching time and physiotherapy are more concentrated on a smaller, performance squad. Whilst there aren’t any examples of other University rowing teams making these kinds of cuts at the moment, he gave the example of Durham’s “wrecking ball” squad, whose successes last summer, he believes, demonstrate the competitive edge held by smaller teams.
Flockhart was also keen to emphasise that athletes not making the cut were not “being hung out to dry”. The non-performance club rowing team is the alternative way offered by EUBC for athletes to stay involved in the sport, and Flockhart said he wanted to make sure that those who failed to make the cut didn’t think it was the end of their university rowing experience. Nevertheless, he admitted the process of cutting the squad was “brutal”, and, from the faces of those who had missed the test threshold, it was clear that the prospect of joining club rowing provided little relief at that moment.
It remains to be seen whether the cuts will have the desired effect of boosting the club’s performance, further on the water tests decide who makes the final squad, but the changes have made for a challenging and emotionally charged period within the tightly knit club over the past few weeks.
Photo Credits: Ben Driver