QAS Supported Athlete: Erik Horrie

[Music] jump in a boat experience the sensation of feeling the water moving underneath you the peacefulness out on the water it's something that it's very hard to explain how good it is [Music] so my classification is pr1 so we're we're actually the highest impaired classification so we're a fixed seat boat and we're strapped in so we're mainly spinal cord injuries in the category and we don't have use of our legs back in 2010 I was the high performance manager of Rowan Queensland at the time and Erica just transitioned out of wheelchair basketball and he wants to give rowing and go my previous role before that was the head coach of the Great Britain power rowing team I was fortunate enough to coach tomaga there who won a gold medal and was quite dominant and Eric come up to me the first time I met him and said um I want to I want to beat tomaga how do I do it so that told me all I needed to know that he was quite dogged and very determined as far as an athlete's concerned well it wasn't my choice the switch from wheelchair basketball to rowing it was basically a case of thank you very much position in the teams no longer and I wanted to get to London and tell an ID officer Chris Nunn down in Canberra come up to me afterwards and said look what do you want to do you can do hand cycling or rowing and it basically come down to I tried hand cycling and then tried running I thought how hard can it be it's a thousand meters at that stage the pictures they showed me look really nice so yeah it's like 35 kilometer race or a 1K race and I went I'll go with the 1K one door closed one door opened and rowing's now taking me all around the world and certainly made me the person I am today yeah the transition uh back to qas has gone unbelievably well with all the staff and all the other athletes they've certainly made me welcome and it's great to be back home some of the equipment from the modifications that we have on his boat is that we hear his pontoons on the side of his boats just to increase the stability we've moved his Gates inward so that he can row a longer Arc so that's made some adjustments to his rigor we've also made him a specialized seat that's molded to him specifically and he rose with shorter oars as well given any rows for a longer Arc so there's actually quite a few modifications that we've made to his boat that are prescribed by World rowing but also what we have done as far as a performance benefit for him is concerned the goals this year has changed a lot from previous years we're really focusing on the the World Championships a lot of the other stuff is just in stones and so the world Champs are the the big one because that's qualifying for Paris so that's our main goal at the end of the year so everything else is just a small stepping stone I honestly think that um nothing's not possible as a person with a disability it doesn't matter what what it is how to go you hop on the boat you push away from the Pontoon you're away from the wheelchair it's one of the only Sports apart from swimming sort of thing that if you are wheelchair-bound you aren't actually pushing an object so it's that whole thing you've been out on the boats just out in the elements like everyone else and it doesn't really matter if you you've got a disability you're not it's it's just unbelievable being out there early in the morning seeing the sunrise and just having fun [Music]