Rowing Canada Aviron (RCA) announces the hiring of Peter Cookson, originally from St. Catharines, Ont., as its new High Performance Director. Cookson brings more than 30 years of involvement with the sport of rowing at national and international levels to this newly created position.
"It is a great honour to be involved with the Canadian rowing program," said Cookson. "I look forward to working together with the world-class group of coaches and athletes in building an already strong program into a team that will challenge for top honours in London in 2012."
Cookson, who coached South Africa's women's single sculler at the 2008 Olympics, began his coaching career in Canada in 1985 and was a leading coach for several prominent Canadian university programs - University of British Columbia, University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto. He has since coached in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and has been involved with the FISA (the international rowing federation) Development program in Africa. Cookson, 51, has also worked in coaching education for many years and produced the 2005 DVD called Effective Sculling Technique.
"We are delighted to have Peter return to Canada to lead our high performance programs," said Phil Monckton, Rowing Canada's VP High Performance. "In addition to overseeing our National Team programs to top results on the international stage, Peter will work on our athlete and coach development programs. We need to build upon our success in Beijing and produce sustainable results."
Cookson will be responsible for the overall management of Rowing Canada Aviron's high performance and national team programs, both able bodied and adaptive. He will work with the coaches and high performance staff (administrative and sport science) to create a sustainable system that can build on the Beijing 2008 success and create significant medal opportunities for Canada in 2012 and beyond. As well, Cookson will work on the development of an elite coaching curriculum and appropriate coordination of elite programming with leading provincial rowing associations to support the overall high performance system benchmarks. He begins his work with RCA this month on a part-time basis, moving to full time in September 2009.
Rowing Canada maintains two training centres. At the Victoria (BC) Training Centre, Mike Spracklen is the Centre Lead and National Heavyweight Men's Coach, working with Terry Paul, National Men's Development Coach, and Howie Campbell, National Lightweight Men's Coach. At the London (ON) Centre, Carsten Hassing is Centre Lead and National Heavyweight Women's Coach, along with Al Morrow, National Lightweight Women and Development Coach, and Michelle Darvill, National Women's Under-23 Coordinator.