Rowing Canada Aviron (RCA) is pleased to announce that Peter Shakespear, an internationally known expert in the area of athlete and coach talent identification, is joining RCA's high performance leadership team effective immediately.
Peter Shakespear is a graduate of the University of Western Australia, has rowed at two Olympics and coached national crews at all levels from junior to Olympic. While coaching at the Australian Institute of Sport, his work helped develop a Talent Identification (TID) system that produced a significant number of world champions for Australian women?s rowing for 15 years. He later spent six years as Performance Development Manager with the British rowing federation, where he established World Class Start, a successful program that identified and developed athletes who went onto Olympic success in 2012. Both the original Australian and the GB talent identification and development systems produced Olympic champions from athletes who were recruited from non-rowing sources.
Shakespear will be joining the Rowing Canada as Director of National Talent ID and Development Programs, and will work with the National Development Coordinator and coaches to focus on building our next generation of Olympic athletes capable of producing podium results for Canada.
?I am excited to be joining RCA's high performance staff and look forward to contributing to the identification and development of the athletes and coaches,? said Shakespear.
?RCA already has a proud record of regularly producing medal crews and there is scope to add to that record. However, the most important factor is the attitude of enthusiasm to move forward from both Rowing Canada Aviron and the key players in Canadian sport. Own The Podium and its partners have lifted Canada to the top in winter sport and are now are working hard to do the same in summer sports,? said Shakespear.
"This is an exciting move for Canada," said Phil Monckton, RCA VP of High Performance. "Shakespear is well known for producing results and generating Olympic champions. We are thrilled that he is going to call Canada home over the next quadrennial and know that he will leave an incredible legacy for our sport during his tenure here. The addition of Peter is the final link in the chain of our very strong HP leadership team."
Shakespear will be introduced to the Canadian rowing community at Rowing Canada?s National Conference in Richmond, B.C. later this month, and will work out of the training centre located in London, Ontario. He will be joined by his wife, Wilma Shakespear, a former athlete (three-time World Champion in netball) and leader in high performance sport (founding Director of the Queensland Academy of Sport in Australia and the English Institute of Sport in the UK).
"For Rowing Canada Aviron to continue on our quest to be a sustainable, multi-medal winning Olympic sport, Canadian rowing must develop a much larger and stronger athlete pool to draw from. We need to create and sustain a strong and progressive development pathway for our top talent of both athletes and coaches,? said Rowing Canada?s High Performance Director, Peter Cookson. ?Shakespear's expertise in this area will set us on a great course towards long-term success and results.?