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WILL THE BOAT GO FASTER?
training. The need to commit became clearer in the lower sixth, when I started trialling for the under-18 national team - instead of being the best guy in a very small pond, I found there are suddenly a lot of bigger, faster guys than me and I started thinking I need to step up to the mark! I started training more seriously and made it to the national team level in the lower sixth, but injured my back at an early season team training camp and was unable to row for three years. This was a major setback, but it gave me the confidence that I could potentially make it to the international level. It really motivated me to go for it too. For the last 18 months at Dulwich and first two years at Cambridge I wasn’t able to row. Not just that, my back hurt when out of the boat too – for my A-levels I was granted medical dispensation to walk around the back of the PE centre during my exams to ease my back pain. However, this experience made me realise rowing was something I really wanted to do - aged 16 I was told I would need a couple of hours of physio a day or may never row again. Faced with the option to push myself through the physio, or not bother and not row again, made me realise just how much rowing competitively was something I really wanted to do. On to your university days at Cambridge and Kings, London. How were you able to not only balance rowing and an intensive academic schedule, but to thrive, packing in Four Boat Races and continuing through to complete your PhD. Is there a benefit to one from doing the other? Once back in the boat, motivation to train and push myself was easy. I’ve always felt if you’re going to do something, do it properly; there’s no point spending that much time training if you’re not going to be the best you can be! I found this translated into my academic study - if you have the mindset to drive yourself every day for three or four hours on the water, it’s easy to translate it to four or five hours in the library as well. So, for me, academics and sports benefit each other massively; when I was driving myself in rowing, I was driving myself in academic life. I also found sport and academia hugely complimentary - there’s something about doing sports I find really helps strengthen the mind. I always found that when I was physically fit, my mind was fit. You can’t do sport with a lazy mind because you need to always focus on improving and pushing yourself, even when tired. Learning to focus while working hard on the water makes thinking clearly in the library easy. When I was fit, everything about me felt really sharp. Practically, combining training and studies was about routine and not wasting time in the day. This was helped by being in a system like Cambridge, where it’s very regimented in terms of timings –
Take me back to the junior days. We are now fortunate enough to have a permanent boat house on the tideway and access to various facilities. But it wasn’t always like that! As a Dulwich boy who wanted to row, what were the options like at the time you were there? I was at Dulwich through 86-95. In my first years rowing wasn’t even an option, even as a minor sport. The Dulwich College Rowing Society was founded around about 1990, consisting of one person, my brother Damian, with one of his teachers, Trevor Charlton, who had rowed for his college at Cambridge, as a master responsible for the society. By the time I was in the fourth and fifth form, 3 years behind Damian, rowing was still in its infancy. The school managed to get out an 8, training out of Thames Rowing club in Putney on sports afternoons. Dr. Charlton would drive a minibus down at lunchtime, there would be time for an hour max on the water, a quick shower and back for about 4pm The idea of entering competitions wasn’t even on the radar. While I was there, Dulwich didn’t have any rowing infrastructure – when I raced for the College, in my scull [boat for one person with two oars], I had to buy the school athletics kit as there wasn’t a school rowing kit and it was the closest I could find at the commissariat. Damian and I were already rowing at Kingston Rowing Club and had our own sculling boats, so trained on our own. I was a border in Ivyholme, so when I’d finish lessons at lunchtime on sports afternoons, I’d run back to Ivy, get changed, jump on my bike, cycle to Clapham junction, catch the train to Kingston, do a quick 12km or 16km on the water, back on the train and be back at school in time for 6 o’clock dinner with the boarders. At what point did you realise that rowing was not going to be a casual activity and was something that you were going to get to an international level? I started sculling aged about 11. When you’re that young, bigger guys tend to win, so long as they have a modicum of talent, so I didn’t have to take it that seriously, I just enjoyed being on the water. As there was no-one of my own age there, I was on my own so didn’t have any reason to do any land training, it was just a bit of fun. When I was about 15, I started coming up against boys from rowing schools and realised I’d start losing races if I didn’t do some proper training. The great thing about boarding was it gave me all-day access to the PE Centre, so two or three days a week I’d head over there for an ergo [an indoor rowing machine] or basic weights. Looking back, it was pretty amateur stuff, but it was the start of taking it seriously and committing to proper
A conversation with Kieran West OA meets up with Kieran West, who speaks with James Jarratt (04-11), Secretary of the OA Boat Club, and discusses the mindset necessary to become Olympic Champion and how he applies many of the same techniques that took him to gold in Sydney in his professional life today.
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