In the world of rowing, major international events such as the Rowing Beach Spring have been thrown on the back burner because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, says the president of the Rowing Association of Barbados (RAB), Dr Anthony Yarde.
RAB has not been financially impacted as a result of COVID lockdowns and Yarde said that the pandemic allowed his associations and many others the opportunity to pause and reflect.
“I think that it is good the guys can start back training and I also think that federations would have had the time to pause. And in that pause, most of them should have had the time to reflect on what they were doing.
“We took the time to reflect on what we were doing, our strategic plan going forward. How you would build a team of people to help administrate and to go forward in terms of trajectory. So, I think the break was good and a necessary one,” Yarde told Barbados TODAY.
One of two qualified level three rowing coaches in the English-speaking Caribbean, Yarde explained that COVID-19 has forced sporting bodies to include online meetings in their constitutions. He added COVID has done an injustice to sport because it has taken away that personal touch when associations could meet with each other and discuss matters of interest.
“No international bodies had online meetings in their constitutions, COVID has now made us see that part of the way going forward is to have a change of the constitution to house online meetings. If this was already in place, the associations could save a lot of money with regards to flying.
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think anything can outdo personalisation. . . I think that COVID has done an injustice to sports because it left us without that personal touch and everything was done online. That takes away from the personal touch and the relationship, personalisation relationship. I must say that is one of the greatest things I am afraid of where technology is concerned. Technology is moving everybody out of that personal touch into the online phase and that is a frightening thing,” Yarde explained.
Besides Barbados, Yarde revealed that rowing in places like India has been significantly impacted.
According to the RAB president, beach rowing has put the Caribbean into a sharper focus because the region does not have still water to train. He noted that rowers from the islands would have had to go overseas for international training camps. In fact, the international training camp is one of the things that COVID stopped.
“The development of the sport for the Caribbean would have been hampered because we have no Caribbean meets, we have no Caribbean rowing competitions,” he added.
While no one from RAB will be going to the Olympics to represent Barbados, Yarde raised questions about Barbados’ readiness for the mega-events. Already countries like Brazil have pulled out of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics in Japan as the world continues to battle the pandemic.
“Are we really ready for the Olympics? Or is it just a waste of money? Is there still going to be an Olympics? We have to ask ourselves what are the risks we are taking for the athletes because the Olympics are in the next two months,” Yarde said.
While RAB continues to take the positives out of COVID, there is at least one flip side to that Yarde revealed. “We have our four new boats [but] we can’t go on the water. This coming Sunday RAB is hoping to go on the water for training,” he added.
“We tested one of them and it was sweet. We were getting ready to go on the water when COVID hit. But we will be going on the water Sunday coming just to get the feel. We will be following strict protocols.
“Rowing is one of those sports that even before the protocols, rowers had the distance in between them and rowing is always on the water. It has only affected us with regards to indoor rowing in terms of the machine. But other than that, we are good,” Yarde said.
morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb
