Find out more about Surf Life Saving Australia’s (SLSA) partnership with Rowing Australia here.

Rowing Australia (RA) is looking for their next Olympic Gold medallist.  

Since 1998, 23 members of SLSA have represented Australia in rowing at the Olympic Games, collecting 7 Gold, 4 Silver, and 4 Bronze medals along the way. Successful surf athletes that have made the transfer to rowing include Mike McKay, Drew Ginn, Kate Slatter and David Crawshay. 

The partnership between SLSA and RA will begin as a pilot program focused on identifying local athletes with the potential to compete at the Rio Olympics in 2016 and win Gold. RA will be running a Development Clinic and a Talent Identification (TID) testing session to discover Olympic talent in the region.

The Development Clinic on Sunday 19 February 2012 will be run by a high performance RA coach and is open to any sweep and their crew to attend. This session is all about improving rowing technique in surf athletes and is one of the benefits back to surf lifesaving from this partnership with RA. The Clinic will be made up of an Athlete Coaching session (athlete coaching) and a Coach Development session (coach professional development). The venue for this Clinic will be at South Narrabeen SLSC and Narrabeen Lake just up the road.     

The TID testing session is on Sunday 26 February 2012. Surf athletes will be required to complete a range of physical tests and the results will be used to uncover athletes with the potential to become Olympic Gold medallists. Identified athletes will be placed in a learn to row program based at the Mosman Rowing Club, Mosman where they will be supported by both RA and SLSA in their journey to become a rowing Olympian.
 

Could you be Rowing's next Olympic Gold Medallist?

Females – are you over 180cm tall? Males, over 193cm? Do you have the strength and endurance to win Gold?

If yes, then we strongly encourage you to attend the TID testing session. No rowing experience is required.

Register to attend

TID Testing Session - to register for this session please click here. An email will be sent to you after the close of registrations with more information about the tests that you will complete and the venue. Registrations for the TID testing session close on Wednesday 22 February, 

Click here for more information on how the program will roll out.