SASS Episode 75 Segment 5 (Jed Altschwager & Oscar McGuinness – Rowing SA)

[Music] yes welcome back to the sports show of course we sit here nicely in adelaide in the covered mate of course we want to try and get onto the world stage so we've got a couple of superstar rowers in to join us uh jed ortwicker comes in oscar mcginnis thanks for coming in fellas a little bit tricky for you guys to try and work out on the olympics 2021 or just there then you've got other events to try and qualify to get through that where does it sit yeah right now with you oh it's it's hard it's it's it's a big question mark i guess really with what's going on and uh you know every athlete and everyone really has got to take an individual approach and for me you know i guess the people that are surrounding us around us it's it's really just what we can do now head down and and and get into it and see what see what it kind of looks like see what landscape looks like say the end of the year really wow yeah that's a tough it's been tough for everybody yeah without i mean regardless of sport or not right it's been tough it's been a big tough one where are you man oscar yeah i guess like the the thing that we were told just from the beginning was you got to train like everything is going to go ahead anyway so even at the start of the year when things started looking a bit dodgy but we still had this year to look forward to we're still training as if you know 2020 was going to happen and world champs and all that was going to happen i have to ask you about and you get asked this a thousand times but did you get in the sport of rowing when you had a dad that played 200 afl games uh freddie uh was it did you ever try the footy or did you yeah i think the the footy dream was pretty quick gone after i tried to kick it's just pretty pretty average to be honest um you don't have to do that when you're rowing so yeah yeah hand-eye coordination just not having that it's a big help um i played footy in school here and there for fun but there was never really any any push to do that from from dad or anything just sort of find your own way and to be honest sport in general wasn't really big on my plate until i was 15 16 found rowing had a couple really influential coaches and sort of took off from there how did you find rowing i mean that's not an i thought that you would go oh i think i'll try rowing there's there's cricket there's tennessee yeah well i mean i tried all of them i think trying to try to find something really and then uh so through saint peter's college their rhyme program there at the time was coached by sam locke who was an ex-olympian and a pretty hard unit and sort of just fell in love with the principles that he would teach us and things like that okay so judge you came through a different path mate yeah 2015 for you or in an accident you know tried to take on an excavator and lost yeah so you lose a part of your leg what drew you to rowing i guess uh you know 18 months after my injury um and rehabilitating and all that and and i guess the mindset i had to get me through that i kind of got to a point and said how far can i take this and this didn't really know what it was at that stage but how far can i go what can i do and what next for me was you know something that's quite big was would be representing your country so i looked at parasport and one that stuck out was rowing i love the water um and learnt pretty quickly how tough it is it is a tough tough sport you know we don't get to we you know it's not like we race a lot we train a lot we've got you got to love the process you got to love the training environment so um that's how i got into it um i chose that and we went down that path and and here i am today yeah jude can i ask you a question here that with paralympic sport people that lose a limb or lose half a limb or whatever is there is there a change in mindset uh after the accident is there is there more power somewhere else is there that drive is that there before the actual i mean i guess to be honest in a way for sure i i don't think i fundamentally changed as a human being but what happened was i was tested i was tested more than most people get the opportunity to be tested and i can look back at it now and i'm actually very thankful for that test because i've been able to grow more as a person than i probably ever would have um and and everyone's story would be different right you know i i got to row a lot with uh last year with will smith who's um ex scholar it's uh some peters went to school with oscar good mate of both of ours he's vision impaired he's been like that the whole way so hanging with him it's like him it was always water off a duck's back you get to everyone's got their own story off it um of what they've been through but for me it was um yeah for me it worked out the way it was i made a pretty quick rise three years later you're winning a silver medal mate at the world champs and then uh you know another one in the singles and so it's kind of been a very successful venture for you so far and then you know the olympics are kind of just sitting here that we've tried to discuss early so when you talk about your workload right now what's what's the motivation when you're unsure that yeah dream's kind of not really there it is but it isn't that's the hard thing yeah so that's what for both of you to keep training when the goal may not be there i'm just wondering what's the thought process getting into the water on the boat i think it changes so first of all when it got locked down right it was we're all home um and and we really didn't know what was going on uh and i think one really good thing that we we did as a crew as as a crew at sassy and and and rowing sa here is we really kept everyone accountable through just sort of you know texting we set up a platform while we're training this per day but really when it you know when you've got to hold your hand on the fire every day you know because it's so hard and and then you then then yet that goal that you've been setting yourself toward may not be there for me i had i've had a couple of tough weeks immensely with that and i've had to shift my goals to being they've never been set just on the paralympics it's never been be all and all but i've really had to focus on what else rowan gives me and what else i want to do day in and day out and so being able to push myself being able to be surrounded by athletes like oscar and other people that i get to row with is really what i love i guess and that keeps me going that every day sorry is that the same for you yeah i think um for initially when everything hit it was a lot of you know pretty dreary not looking forward to much and then we had a couple uh talks with coaches and they sort of outlined that this is a good way to to go past people you know like everyone's reeling right now uh you can use this time and particularly in sa where we're pretty lucky we were probably the first in the country back on the water and to use that to go quick you know not everyone's going to have the same opportunity so take what you can and go as quick as you can with it you must be you must be jumping out of your skin looking for some competition like serious competition after picking up gold in the in the transtasma master you know what you know you must be well come on i need i need to race here somewhere i need to be getting into it somewhere yeah you picked up gold you know in the double skull yeah yeah that's right tom williamson who was a movie star isn't he but you your class is a single seller you picked up gold in the in the double sculla now i was a scalar different but you must be really itching to get at it i mean you know without competition yeah it's tough absolutely but i think at the same time there's always competition where you go looking for it so uh even at the sheds at sassy you know none of us really are competing in the same categories but you can always you know who's meant to be going what speed and you can work off them so even if one of the girls is going off give them a minute go after them you try and chase they try and hold you off yeah there's always something to push off of don't need much motivating mode or you are you one that needs a little kick up the bottom uh i'm happy to train all day by myself but it's certainly if you're feeling sorry for yourself these guys won't let you for very long dude i'm interested right because you fairly similar past when you when you were you were in the pairs silver in the world's at that and then silver in the singles silver in the paragraph yeah what what makes you go from singles to pears singles to pair we train a lot in the single uh especially at the start of a season you so you sort of train a lot and then and purely because it just gives good boat feel good fitness and stuff like that and then usually you get selected into a boat and it's really what's on offer so what a growing australia offer or what's what's getting offered for international competition so our boat next year that we qualified in 2019 so the tokyo paralympics boat is actually a mixed coxed four so that's a different boat again and that's the one i'll be going for in february if who knows if we can get there who knows that's a very good point boys really appreciate you coming i know it's a difficult time especially really admire the ability to stay focused through a tough time so really appreciate it john oscar good luck with the boys we'll follow you with interest stay with us still a little bit more to come on the show [Music] you