THE SPORT OF ROWING Heddle: “Once I made the National Team, during the year we would stay with our home clubs. I would row in a single at Burnaby Lake Rowing Club in Vancouver.”6763 Current British Women’s Sculling Coach Paul Thompson:6764 “While they were still competing in [sweep] rowing, much of their training took place in singles, which Al believed to be the foundation for every other rowing boat.”6765 Heddle: “There were various training camps in Victoria over the winter and into the spring, and then we would have a date when we all had to be in London. We would generally spend our summers in London. “Marnie was from Toronto, and she had gone to the University of Western Ontario, so she was already in London. “I guess we were first put together in 1990. Al used seat racing in pairs, basically, to find the top performer on each side. I came out the top port and Marnie the top starboard, so we were like, ‘We have to row together?’ We weren’t too enthusiastic about it. We’re quite different people! “When you’re beside Marnie, she’s one end of the scale, really, and I don’t mean in a bad way. She’s the typical extrovert, and I’m quite introverted. I was obviously able to be aggressive on the water and in training, but we were very different off the water, like she would look at me and think, ‘What is her problem? Show some emotion, why don’t cha? Show that you care about this stuff!’ And I would look at her and just say, oh, I don’t know, ‘Why do you have to talk so much?’ FISA Commentator David Goldstrom: “Marnie’s the speaker. Kathleen’s the silent one.”6766 Heddle: “Al sat down with us and talked about how Marnie was the sparkplug and I was the piston, and that we were a good partnership. “We said, ‘Okay . . . if you say so . . . ‘ “Obviously, we figured out how to go fast, but it took us many years to finally appreciate each other, to realize everyone’s different, and everyone prepares for racing differently. I want to sit in my room before a race, and Marnie wants to be out meeting every single person from the other teams. We just had to let that stuff go.”6767 “I want to highlight all the training we did in small boats. Though Marnie and I ended up the designated pair in ‘91 and ‘92, we were far from dominant among the Canadian women in training and racing pieces. “Racing pieces were always close, and we were often beaten by the other pairs like Barnes/Taylor and Monroe/Doey.6768 “Likewise later in sculling, the women’s lightweight double of Colleen Miller and Wendy Wiebe6769 were often faster than us in training pieces, and our [1995 and 1996] quad teammates of Laryssa Biesenthal and Diane O’Grady always gave us a good run. This ultra-competitiveness within the team, every day, kept us on our toes and served us well in the big races.”6770 1992 Just as Mike Spracklen was doing during those same years with the Canadian 6763 Ibid. 6764 See Chapter 144. 6765 Thompson, p. 24 6766 FISA 1994 Video commentary 6767 Heddle, op. cit., 2010 6768 pronounced “dewey.” 6769 1993-95 World Champions. 6770 Heddle, op. cit., 2010 1874
