Those Alaskan girls …
If I was asked to write a press release, reporting back to media outlets in Alaska exactly what transpired during the four days of rowing events at the just-concluded 2013 World Masters Games in Torino, Italy — as in fact I was — it would look pretty much like the report attached below.
Which is to say it shares the names, numbers and facts about the winners, to the best of my knowledge, in predictable journalistic language. What it doesn’t share, however, are stories about rowers who finished fourth or fifth or last, or how it all felt, or “what the weather was” (as Hemingway used to say) with observations that really matter.
I’ll try to provide some of that when I return to the Games in future posts as I continue my travels across Europe (so maybe you should follow my blog). In the meantime, however, take a look at the pictures in the slide show below the text, which offer a hint of what I’m talking about. Each is its very own story.
Alaska women row to World Masters Games success
Rowing events in the quadrennial World Masters Games in Torino, Italy, concluded Sunday with a 30-person squad from the Anchorage Rowing Association medaling in six events, the best showing in the Games by Americans.
Anchorage’s medal haul on a 1,000-meter course on Candia Lake outside Torino — site of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games — included two golds and four silvers.
In addition to Anchorage, Homer sculler Karen Hurd, a member of the Kenai Peninsula-based Alaska Midnight Sun Rowing Association, won medals in two more races — a second in women’s doubles with Peninsula rower Margo Bias, and a third in mixed pairs with her husband, Jim Hurd.
Twelve hundred rowers joined the four-day competition, racing in eight separate age categories, from post-college rowers in their late 20s to seniors in their 70s and 80s.
Australia alone sent 700 rowers to Italy and easily won the most medals. But Anchorage may have shown the greatest improvement.
The 15-year-old club, which has to wait for the ice to break on Sand Lake each spring before it can even begin to practice, only won one medal in the 2009 Games held in Sydney and two in the 2005 Games in Edmonton.
In Italy last week Anchorage eclipsed those results on the very first day of competition, advancing both men and women to the finals in several races and winning silver medals in three.
All-woman boats, however, were the only ones that medaled, including a first-ever medal (a silver) in women’s eights, one of the sports glamour events — partly because an eight is the longest and fastest of the seven boats used in rowing and requires the most teamwork.
The Anchorage (age-class “C”) eight included rowers Janet Curran, Marietta Hall, Shelly Andresen, Emma Haddix, Jessica Willis, Erin Bashaw, Anne Blount, Elisa Samuelson and coxswain Natasha Graham. The club is coached by Kern McGinley.
A team from Latvia-Estonia won the gold in the women’s eight event, followed by Anchorage (rowing under the USA banner), Canada, Australia, Russia and Italy.
Curran led ARA overall by winning four medals, including one gold and three silvers. In addition to her second in the eight, her medal boats included silvers in women’s doubles (with Julie Truskowski) and coxed fours (with Haddix, Blount, Bashaw and coxswain Graham).
Her gold came in one of two finals in women’s Class B quads (competition that was divided in half due to a scheduling error by race officials). Joining Curran in the gold medal boat were Truskowski, Hall and Samuelson.
Anchorage’s second gold came in a woman’s pairs race rowed by Haddix and Willis, who sped down the course unopposed due to a lack of entries in what some regard as rowing’s most difficult event.
The final Anchorage silver medal came in a woman’s four without coxswain rowed by Robby Bear, Janeece Higgins, Deb Walker and Sue Sheard.
Overall this year’s World Masters Games saw 18,000 athletes compete in hundreds of events in 30 different sports. The next Games are scheduled to be held in Auckland, New Zealand in 2017.
Rowing with Ulysses 