Justin Wall - World Rowing Championships

Justin Wall has been in Shanghai celebrating local success at the World Rowing Champs. Luke was able to catch him from the other side of the globe to share in the excitement. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
A lot of athletes are doing wonderful things at the moment,
and some of them over in Shanghai for the World
Rowing Champs which have just wrapped up. Somebody who's been
in the thick of it is from Ashburton Rowing Club,
justin Wall and I understand that we've had a few
locals doing rather well.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
They mate, yeah, very much though. So Veronica our daughter,
she stroked the woman's squad be came fifth in the
A final, which is an excellent performance. It's a brand dad,
oh absolutely. Of course. The standout performance was that of
Oliver Welsh. Ollie Welsh's dad Mark Quent Ashburton College, his

(00:42):
father Bruce, and his grandfather Bruce and grandmother Jack here
and the figureheads in the community. So he won the
men's pair with a chap called Ben Taylor, whose granddad
used to farm up on the eshpertin Myths and Highway,
so quite a connection in that boat. So Bolli was

(01:06):
the World under twenty three champion last year, stepped up
and you know, produced the goods and outstanding them and
the means peers. It was great.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
It's an incredible amount of work and discipline required to
get to this level. I don't know how we sum
it up, but you're able to give some perspective on that,
you know, the sacrifices that are being made.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, well, I'm a person who I don't think you know,
they'd probably scale at me, but I don't think they
make They don't sacrifice anything because they're doing what they want.
But what they do is they totally commit to the
task in hand. They're only training five and a half
days a week. Now the coach day here, well, the

(01:50):
coaches like today have a day and a half off,
so they spoil it. But they will vary between a
light week of seventeen hours and a big week is
between twenty six to twenty nine hours. Wow. So yeah,
there's a reasonable amount of work. Ye, big commitment.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Paint a picture of the event itself.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, apart from the fact that we're like Wilton, Lily
is walking around the place so hot, it's the regatta
has gone on for longer than normal because they have
introduced mixed gender racing in the elite levels. The purpose
built course, it's built on the side of the lake.

(02:30):
You know, it's lovely. The thing about that has really
struck me about China and here we are here, and
Shanghai is everything is you know, there's just an aesthetic
to the place like there is. There are pop plants,
they're probably clastic plants, but all along the motorways there's

(02:51):
lights everywhere. Buildings are decorated and so that the whole
venue and the city itself is very picture.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
So you bringing home some landscaping ideas to put to
use at.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Lake Well, I was actually thinking, I think maybe the
district council should just you know, start putting around some
plaster clients around the place. They look pretty and no
one will knows the difference. They don't take quite the
same amount of weeding neat well Ook.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Our local athletes must be stoked. Were you to from here?
Is it a break in terms of the rowing calendar.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
They have or sort of us? They go into the
I've got two weeks or doing whatever they like, and
then they don't have to report back for four weeks,
but they have to start training again in two weeks
by themselves, and then they go into a thing called
the Summer squad, which is the grouping of all of

(03:48):
the elite athletes and they train all the way through
to the selection process in March, which then puts them
into the teams for the World Champs next year, which
are going to be in Rotterdam in a similar time
of year and not quite so hot.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
We all hope you're welcomed by these supporters, and just
puts into perspective just how much Mohey is required to
get to this point. So incredible effort from our locals
at the World Rowing Champs.