Alex Williams - Rowing

I started rowing at school after many years of swimming and surf lifesaving back home on the south coast of Victoria. Initially I wasn’t very good (Only won a couple races in my 4 years of school rowing) but I found my footing after school finished, training out of my home club of Corio Bay in Geelong. My coach at the time was Dick Garrard, a man who had been to the Olympics in 1964, showed me what it meant to want it and that you get exactly what you put in out of rowing.

The outcome of continuing rowing after school was selection to the u19 Australian team after a successful nationals campaign (rowing for Adelaide University at that time). Luca and I travelled back and forth between here, Gold Coast and Sydney to train our double scull while I was at university. We scraped through in the heat by ¼ of a second, through the semi by .4 of a second and raced in lane 1, which if you know how seeding works in rowing, it’s the ‘slowest’ qualifiers lane. It was a lot of fun to race with no expectations. We ended up placing third in a large field which is probably one of my greatest moments in the sport due to the fact we both bought in to the idea of putting 100% in and seeing how it goes.

Questions

The best thing about being a SASI Athlete:

Access to the new building.

My favourite food to fuel me as an Athlete:

Chicken pesto pasta with cherry tomatoes.

My favourite movie:

Whiplash.

My favourite colours:

Green.

My sporting hero and why:

Roger Federer: the amount of class he has is unmatched (and apparently, I look a little like him).

My favourite possession:

Glasses.

The sporting activity I most like performing:

Racing others.

If I wasn’t doing my current sport I would like to be:

PGA tour golfer.

The most important things in life:

It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight, it’s about the size of fight in the dog.

My ambassador activity tip:

Do something that you can be proud of.

My favourite way to keep active:

Cycling to training/uni.

The sport I like watching the most:

Sprint cycling (London 2012 Anna Meares!).

What sporting success looks like:

Being proud of the journey, not just the outcome.