Stewart punches ticket to worlds
Brock rower Sam Stewart will represent Canada at the under-23 world championships. Photo by KEVIN LIGHT.
Sam Stewart’s meteoric rise up the rowing ranks has continued in 2021 with the 21-year-old London native being named to Canada’s team for the World Rowing Under 23 Championships July 7-11 in Račice, Czech Republic.
The Brock University athlete will compete in the men’s double with Raphael Berz, a scholarship rower at Yale.
“It has been great to watch Sam develop from a relative newcomer with an uncertain future when he came in first year to being one of Canada’s top under-23 athletes in just three years,” Brock head coach Peter Somerwil said. “He developed a great work ethic and is now seeing the rewards of all his hard work.”
Stewart, who tried out for the under-23 team two years ago and ending up representing Canada at the under-21 Trans-Tasman Regatta in New Zealand, earlier this year won the Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships and finished seventh at world championships.
The process to make the under-23 team started with a two-month training camp. Because there was no on-water selection due to the pandemic, Rowing Canada looked at two-kilometre ergometer times for athletes from across Canada and selected a number of athletes to attend a training camp in Victoria, B.C., starting May 20. Once in Victoria, seat racing was held to determine which two athletes would form the double.
“That process took about three weeks to do and to come to a final decision and then there was one final hurdle to get through,” he said.
Stewart and his partner needed to achieve a gold medal standard time. Achieving that standard signifies the crew has the potential to medal at the under-23 world championships.
“When we were trying to hit the gold medal standard, we didn’t do so well on the first try and they told us they would give us another chance,” he said. “The night before that race, I had a bit of a mental breakdown because it was right there and so close. I had been out there for two and half or three weeks.”
Thankfully, the double reached the standard and booked its berth in the world championships.
“It was a big sense of relief to hear the words that they were going to go ahead with it. Up until that point, I was very stressed out. This was something I told myself a year ago that I wanted to pursue.”
Stewart noted it took a lot more than a year to get to the opportunity.
“It is the culmination of a lot of years of work.”
He is thrilled to have the chance to represent Canada at the world championships.
“I have been envisioning myself in the (starting) gates and sort of wondering what I will do, what I will say or how I will keep my composure.”
Stewart is looking forward to the competition.
“We haven’t been given a whole lot of time to train in this double but it is good and I have high hopes for us,” he said. “The goal is to just go out there, race hard and put something together.”
He has drawn inspiration and motivation by talking with athletes who are in Victoria preparing for the Tokyo Olympics.
“They actually lined us up against some of the boats that were heading to Tokyo which I thought was a really cool experience. Never did I imagine I would be lining up against the boys going to Tokyo.”
It’s a glimpse of what may lie ahead.
“If you are looking at the hierarchy of rowing, the under-23 world championship is essentially one step down from elite level rowing,” Stewart said.
At the end of summer, he will return to Brock for another year of rowing and his fourth year of schooling. In 2019, he was second in the men’s double and third in the men’s coxed four at the Ontario University Athletics championships. At the Canadian championships, he sat stroke seat in Brock’s men’s eight that placed fourth and was also fifth in a pair.
“Coming off a summer like this it will be nice to carry this momentum into the fall,” he said.
His long-term goal for rowing is to stick with it and see where it takes him.
“The goal is to compete at the senior level in the coming years with Paris (Olympics) right around the corner,” the history major said. “I am keeping my options open.”
