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Four south african Rowers making history at the prestigious Head at the weekend charles at the regatta boston As the country’s first colored team to compete at the international level.
Their participation symbolizes a multinational effort to expand access to one of the most exclusive and exclusive sports dominated by white athletes and open the 60-year-old regatta to a more diverse future of sailors.
Competitive sailing began among the English who colonized both what is now South Africa and United States of AmericaBut historically a large portion of the population living there was excluded from recreation on the water.
In recent years, a network of advocates has gathered athletes from around the world for representation at Charleston with several firsts: the first all-Black women’s 8+ from the US, an Indigenous 4+ and a Native women’s 4+, among others. The 8+ is an eight-oared sweep boat with eight athletes and a coxswain to steer and direct the sailors, while the 4+ is a four-oared sweep boat with one coxswain.
Lwazi-No Zwane, a 23-year-old man who trains in Germiston, South Africa, formerly johannesburgSaid he and his sailors are very aware that they are role models for young sailors.
“It takes a lot to get into this regatta,” said Zwane, who will compete in the men’s championship 4+ event. “There have been a lot of losses, a lot of setbacks.”
Drawing from Western Cape rowing, Zwane said the legacy of poverty and economic inequality that was the result of apartheid in South Africa and other racist policies leveraged in the US has “shaped our story as a story of violence and oppression and double standards.”
“There is a different story for us, but the work to get there is not an easy task,” he said of reframing the false stories.
Lack of access, not lack of talent
Sailors who are not white or from affluent backgrounds in the U.S. and South Africa face similar issues, said Arshe Cooper, whose foundation worked to bring the South African contingent to the Charles as well as a contingent of underrepresented athletes from the U.S.
Among those issues: lack of access to waterways and skills like swimming, and the cost of purchasing and storing equipment. The rowing shells alone cost thousands of dollars.
“There are structural limitations, there are neglect,” said Cooper, who rowed on America’s first all-black high school rowing team in Chicago in 1997. “There is talent everywhere, but not a lot of access and opportunity.”
In both countries, some public schools – where athletes of color are more likely to attend – offer access to some type of rowing program. But the equipment is older and the coaches are more novice, making it difficult to compete with private schools with more resources.
Modern competitive rowing emerged in the 19th century at British schools such as Oxford and Cambridge and expanded to elite American colleges such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton – institutions that excluded those who were from working-class backgrounds and were not white or male.
A 2016 analysis by US Rowing found that the typical rower is often perceived as “white and coming from a middle or upper class suburban community”. A 2021 study by the NCAA on gender and race in sports found that among female collegiate rowers, only 2% identified as Black, while 5% identified as Hispanic and 3% identified as Asian. The sport ranked in the bottom third of the least diverse sports out of the 45 sports surveyed by the NCAA.
“For most people of color, they are the person of color in the boat,” said Dennis Aquino, a Filipino American and co-founder of the nonprofit podcast Rowing in Color.
Cooper said the goal is to add new faces to the game. Sometimes those newcomers are using the platform to highlight social issues. Last year, the regatta’s first Indigenous Four raced with red hands on their oars and faces in honor of murdered and missing Indigenous women.
Aquino said she and her team felt extra urgency this year due to recent policies by the U.S. White House limiting government diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“We’re definitely feeling a sense of fear, but we’re going to do it anyway,” he said. “It’s about youth and people of all ages who will see these boats and feel not only resonance, but visibility and representation in the sport we all love.”
Connecting to water in South Africa
Coach Michael Ortlepp said many of the varsity athletes he typically trains in the south-western coastal city of Cape Town make great sacrifices to get to the boathouse for practice. Most live in isolated townships in the inland east where public transport is not reliable. Some people have struggled to find housing. Some mornings, they receive messages from sailors that they cannot attend practice due to gang warnings and shootings in their neighborhoods. A portion of the funding from Cooper’s foundation has helped pay for a bus to collect athletes for practice.
With Cooper’s support, the Ortleps Association has grown from eight sailors to 45 in three years.
Ortlapp said, “I have sailors who stay in the cafeteria for a week without food or any kind of accommodation. Those are common stories; they’re not rare.”
Zwane, who first started sailing at the age of 14, said he takes several minibuses a day to get to Lake Victoria near Johannesburg.
The community rowing boathouse in Boston where he is preparing for the race, one of several along the Charles River, is a far cry from the facilities he is accustomed to.
“It feels a little disorienting to be in this environment because it’s everyone’s daily life, just normal life. It’s — from my perspective, for a lot of kids who understand what it’s like to grow up in my shoes — it’s a luxury. If anything, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” he said. “Every day I get on the water, every day we come out here, every day we see different scenes. … It’s always in the back of my mind that this isn’t normal for me, but it is for someone else.”
“I think we’re more fortunate that we have the ability to get closer to these places, but getting to those places has become more difficult than anything.”