From the Editor: Coaches, the Great Influences in Rowing

Your coach is the single greatest influence on your rowing experience. He or she teaches you to be better, which can be uncomfortable. You grow and improve as a rower and teammate, and therefore as a person, through that coaching.

The 13 U.S. men who won Olympic medals in Paris—the first since 2008—know that truth well, and they nominated their boat coaches, Casey Galvanek and Micheal Callahan, as well as the supportive and influential Mike Teti, Tim McLaren and Kris Korzeniowski, for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s Order of Ikkos.

A coach does not achieve coaching success at the Olympic level without prior championship-coaching success. Both Galvanek and Callahan coached crews to championships on multiple levels leading up to the Olympic level, and, like Teti, McLaren, and Korzeniowski, had great influences on more than 13 Olympians along the way.

I know how influential a coach can be, perhaps better than anyone, through my high-school coach, who was also my father. What I learned from him goes far beyond rowing, as it did for the thousands of young people he taught, coached, led, counseled, and inspired to reach their potential throughout his long life.

Rich Davis died on July 24, and his obituary appears here. Even if you knew him well, you might learn how he helped others quietly and resolutely in ways you never knew. In writing it, I did.

In covering the Olympic regatta, the eighth for Rowing News, I also learned about rowing in parts of the world I never knew through Thomas Earl and his feature about Moroccan sculler Majdouline El-Allaoui, who, fittingly, is also a coach.

As much as we celebrate the glory of winning Olympic medals, we also laud the creed of Baron Pierre de Coubertin: “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

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