WAIS Talent Selected for Rowing Camp
WAIS rowing scholarship holders David Watts and Ashleigh Miles received a boost this week after scoring invites to Rowing Australia’s National Talent Identification and Development camp in Canberra.
Australia’s brightest young rowing talent convened in the nation’s capital this week for a camp at the Australian Institute of Sport as the search continues for Australia’s next batch of international rowers.
The NTID program aims to identify athletes with Olympic medal winning characteristics from around Australia and provide them with a series of development steps.
One of the primary objectives of the camp will be to provide an elite level training camp and learning environment for all athletes who are seen as potential 2010-11 National Team candidates. The athlete categories targeted for the camp are Junior, Youth/U23 and Lightweight.
The 38 rowers taking part in the seven day camp at the National Rowing Centre of Excellence will complete a number of on water sessions, combining this with technical video work, sports science education and strength and conditioning work in the AIS gym.
After over 200 athletes nominated from across Australia in a bid to attend the camp, the NTID unit carefully selected the final number of attendees.
National High Performance Director Andrew Matheson says these rowers are a vital part of the Rowing Australia framework.
“While it is always important to have a strong base of senior athletes to choose from for current national teams, the nurturing and development of younger athletes is also crucial for long term success,” Matheson said. “Although our planning process is currently focused on London 2012, it would be naive to not plan for the long term future.
“The rowers that are attending the camp this week all possess qualities that have the potential to be developed further and I am sure that some of the athletes here will represent Australia at Senior level in the future.”
The camp commenced on Monday with introductory speeches from Senior A athletes David Crawshay and Sally Kehoe, and will conclude on Sunday 20 December.
– Rowing Australia