U-23 coach Baker steps down for major new role

ROWING:IT IS a year of big events and big changes in Irish rowing. The big event of the weekend is the All-Ireland Coastal Rowing Championships, which run from this evening to Sunday, with 595 crews from 44 clubs from Antrim to Kerry descending on Broadstrand, Courtmacsherry, in Co Cork.

The big news is that Rob Baker, the Ireland Under-23 coach, will be stepping aside from his post at the end of his contract in September, to take up a major new role at Cambridge University.

The Englishman, who cites the silver medal at the World Under-23 Championships for the Ireland lightweight quadruple in 2010 as the highlight of his time here, will be named today as the chief coach of the women’s boat club in Cambridge.

This is a new post, created because of the step forward in women’s rowing which will come when the Women’s Boat Race is added to the Boat Race Programme in 2015, with full television coverage. Baker said that the clubs will have equal funding across the board.

Martin McElroy is also leaving his post as Ireland High Performance Director, and the new man or woman to head up the system will have to work with the fact that just one Ireland senior rower (Claire Lambe) reached even B Final level at World Championship or Olympic Games this year. Like McElroy, Baker feels that there is a need for a bigger base, and Baker also feels that the international team needs to be a priority.

“I think that Irish rowing should look very carefully at developing some High Performance centres around the country. If it wants to have a really strong international team then the whole population of Irish rowing needs to look towards that. I feel that there are probably too many athletes spread a little thin amongst the clubs. If Irish rowing wants a really, really strong international team then the whole of the (rowing) population needs to come together to push that forward and develop it. That is the model of what New Zealand rowing and Greek rowing are doing. That is exactly what they are doing.”

The base of Coastal Rowing seems in very healthy shape. John O’Leary, the secretary of the Irish Coastal Rowing Federation, says that the entry of 2,475 rowers for this weekend’s All-Ireland makes it one of the biggest ever. The programme for tomorrow and Sunday begin at 7.30am and will run late into the evening.

There will also be fun off the water. “We are determined to make rowing the centrepiece of a family fun-filled weekend,” Courtmacsherry club promises on the ICRF Facebook site.

There is one Olympic-class event tomorrow: the Belfast Summer Sprints will draw local rowers to the Lagan.

Further afield, the Ireland adaptive rowing team are heading off today from their training camp in Coimbra in Portugal to compete in their first Paralympic Games in London.

The camp has been a useful one, as the Ireland mixed coxed four of Anne Marie McDaid, Sarah Caffrey, Shane Ryan, Kevin du Toit and cox Helen Arbuthnot have been able to test themselves against Canada, who along with Britain and Germany will be favourites to lift medals come next weekend.

The Ireland crew finished fifth at the World Championships of 2010 and 20011, but 2012 has been a mixed year. A bronze medal at the international regatta in Varese in Italy was balanced by a seventh placing in Munich at the only World Cup for adaptive crews.

Coach John Armstrong says Munich has been consigned to the past.

“We’ve worked out why we didn’t perform, and the issues behind that. Pretty well all the way through this camp and every time we have been together since Munich the boat has moved on,” he said.