McGill to host Canadian University Rowing Championships, Oct.31-Nov.1

MONTREAL - McGill will be hosting the Canadian University Rowing Championships this weekend (Oct. 31 - Nov. 1) at the Olympic rowing basin on Ile-Notre Dame, at Parc Jean Drapeau.  Admission is free to the general public.

Some 21 schools and 275 athletes are expected to participate in the event, organized by the McGill rowing club with guidance from Rowing Canada. It marks the third time that McGill will host the Nationals, which were previously held in Montreal in 2004 and in 1981, when the inaugural CURC regatta was run.  McGill will be looking for their first gold medal result when hosting, having won silver in 1981 (men's lightweight four) and silver again in 2004 (men's heavyweight eight).

Friday is reserved as a practice day for all crews, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.  Saturday time trials are scheduled to run from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.  On Sunday, the first of 12 race finals is slated for 9 a.m., on the 2000-metre course, with the last race scheduled to start at 2:50 p.m. An awards banquet will be held at the Holiday Inn Midtown, 420 Sherbrooke Street W., beginning at 5 p.m.

The open events scheduled include eights, pairs and single sculls. The lightweight category will feature fours, doubles and single sculls.

University crews registered to participate are Alberta, Brock, Calgary, Carleton, Fraser Valley, Guelph, Laurentian, McGill, McMaster, Montréal, Concordia, Ottawa, Queen's, Regina, Ryerson, Simon Fraser, Toronto, Trent, UBC, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQAO), Victoria and Western Ontario. A maximum of 12 males and females are permitted from each institution.

Among the McGill medal hopefuls are Montreal natives Brent Hopkins and Jonathan Rinaldi, plus sophomore Renaud Garon-Gendron of Boucherville, Que. Each represented Quebec at the national level last year and qualified for the Canadian under-23 selection camp. Hopkins will sit in the stroke seat of the coxed eight. Rinaldi and Garon-Gendron will be going for gold in the lightweight double.

Hopkins, a 6-foot, 160-pound senior who was named team MVP last year, stroked the lightweight coxed eight to a gold medal at the 2009 Brock Invitational, followed by a respectable eighth-place finish at the Head of the Charles regatta and gold at OUA championships in St. Catharines last week. The 22-year-old biology major also helped the men's coxed four win bronze at the OUAs.

"Brent is a model athlete and a true team leader," said head coach Dr. Philip Hedrei, a former McGill rower who graduated with a medical degree in 2000. He has coached with the McGill club since 2004 and last week, was named as the OUA men's coach of the year. "I would not hesitate to say that Brent is one of the best rowers that the McGill crew has had in the past several years."

Another high-profile member of the Redmen is Nathan De Bono, a third-year arts student from Windsor, Ont., who participated at the Canada Games last August and sits on the No.3 seat in the eight.

The McGill lightweight men's coxed eight, which won gold at the OUA championships last week, is composed of Hopkins in the stroke seat, followed by junior Kirk Vilks (No.7 seat) of Pinawa, Man., senior Travis O'Farrell (No.6) of Unionville, Ont., Adam Hart (No.5), a third-year medical student from Montreal, junior Andrei Popescu (No.4) of Princeton, N.J., De Bono (No.3),  senior Evan deJonghe (No.2) of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and  senior Michael Ross of Scarborough, in the bow seat. The coxswain is Nicole Bewski, a 5-foot-4, science freshman from Winnipeg.

On the women's side, McGill's top performance is expected to come from the lightweight four, which includes Marie-Christine Razaire, a junior from Montclair, N.J., plus senior Jennifer Allan of Montreal, junior Claire Gowdy, a law student from Montreal and Emma Sheehan of St. Catharines, Ont.

Sheehan, a 20-year-old economics and industrial relations junior, had a solid campaign which was kick-started by five gold medals at the Royal Canadian Henley regatta in August.

ABOUT THE McGILL ROWING CLUB

The McGill rowing club was founded in 1924 and folded with the outbreak of war in 1939. After an extended hibernation, rowing resurfaced at McGill in 1976, taking advantage of the new Olympic facilities on Ile Notre-Dame. The team started with only 16 members, out of which only one men's racing crew was formed. The women's crew was initiated in 1980. The following year, McGill played host to the inaugural Canadian University Rowing Championships.

Since that time, the McGill club has emerged as one of the premier programs in the nation, consistently fielding top crews. It has produced a number of national team members. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the Canadian team included four McGill grads (Alison Korn, Tosha Tsang, Greg Stevenson, Bradshaw Crombie), with Korn and Tsang winning silver medals.  Korn also won bronze at the 2000 Games in Sydney. That Canadian squad included grads Ben Storey and Gen Meredith. The 2004 Athens Games also featured four grads: Sarah Pape, Doug Vandor, Mara Jones and Meredith.  Vandor also represented McGill at the 2008 Games in Beijing.  The most recent McGill graduate to row for the national team is Derek O'Farrell (brother of Travis O'Farrell, who is currently on the team).  Derek is a world champion gold medalist.

ABOUT THE OLYMPIC ROWING BASIN

The Olympic basin on Ile Notre-Dame was originally built for the 1976 Summer Olympics. The man-made island, located in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, was specifically constructed for the 1967 World's Fair. It is now known as Parc Jean-Drapeau and is also home to Montreal's Casino, a municipal beach, and the Gilles-Villeneuve racetrack, home of the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix.

The basin has been the site of numerous international rowing events including the 1976 Summer Games, and the world championships in 1975, 1984 and 1992. It has also been the home of the 28th FISA world masters regatta in 2001, the 2003 Canadian open masters championships and the site of the Rowing Canada Cup held annually since 1982.

The basin is 2,180 metres long, 110m wide and 2.3m deep. It is equipped with an Albano system, which divides the basin into seven equal lanes, each 13.5m wide. The basin conforms to FISA standards for starting gate equipment and electronic timing equipment.

CURC SCHEDULE:

Saturday: 9 am - 3:30 pm (time trials)

Sunday: 9 am - 3:30 pm (A, B, C finals)

CURC EVENTS:

Open women's single

Lightweight men's pair

Lightweight women's single

Open men's pair

Open women's coxed eight

Lightweight men's coxed four

Open men's single

Lightweight women's pair

Open women's pair

Lightweight men's single

Lightweight women's coxed four

Open men's eight

SOURCE:

Earl Zukerman

Communications Officer

Athletics & Recreation

McGill University

514-398-7012