Rowing Canada recently announced the retirement of legendary coach Al Morrow. As a rower, Morrow was a member of six National Rowing Teams from 1970 - 1976 and won a bronze medal in the Men's Four at the 1975 Pan American Games. He began coaching after the 1976 Olympics as head coach of the men's rowing team at University of British Columbia, then on to University of Victoria as head coach. In 1988, Morrow moved to the London Ontario National Rowing Team Training Center, and became head coach of the Canadian women's rowing team in 1990. Under Morrow's leadership, Canadian rowers won a combined 15 World Championships and 8 Olympic medals - 4 Gold, I Silver and 3 Bronze at the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008 Olympic Games.

Friendly and personable, Morrow seemed impressively able to keep a low profile while motivating countless Canadian athletes to inspiring results over four decades of coaching. row2k caught up with Morrow at the Joy of Sculling conference in December.

row2k: As you retire and as you plan on stepping away from Rowing Canada, have you had the time yet to look back and take everything in?

Morrow: I think most of my practice since started coaching in 1976 has been reflective. I think I've done that all my life, and I've looked at the past to build. It's quite interesting, I was talking to people in 2005, which of course now 13 years ago, about how I was ready to retire. And I think at that point in time I'd gone to seven Olympics, and I was saying stuff like 'it's time for a younger person.' Beijing [2008 Olympics, eds] was going to have its unique challenges, and I was ready to do other work at that point.

But I ended up staying for three more Olympic cycles. Now I think I am ready for moving on, and because I always reflected on my past through my whole coaching career, the thought of retirement has not been at all a stressful thing. In fact, as they say, you often know when you're ready, and I feel very ready.

There are couple of projects I'm still doing for Rowing Canada - coaching education work. We have a big event every four years called the Canada Games. I'm the technical rep to the various people that organized those games; they're in 2021 in St. Catharines. I'm still involved in small ways and will stay involved.

row2k: Going back to 2005, what changed your mind and what kept you in it for another three Olympic cycles? Was it a single moment or epiphany, or a slow coming around to 'I want to do more' or 'I can do more?'

Morrow: It almost defines my whole rowing career, the answer to that question. Things came up, and opportunities came up. I was still an employee of Rowing Canada. I started working in development work with the U23's, and seeking out and recruiting new talents, and recruiting some of our top women at the time. I was still involved heavily with the women's program to get athletes to come back to Canada from the US college system. We had a lot of really good women in US colleges through that era, we still do.

During my whole career, I've done many more jobs than some people think. A lot of people have always associated me with the national team, and I was the head coach of women from 1990 to 2005. But I've always done a variety of work in rowing at the club level and the university level as well as Rowing Canada. So to me, it was just a lifetime pursuit to always change, and to always do different work.

I've always been really a big proponent of coaching education. I really think it's important to pass on knowledge. I enjoy talking to people about rowing, and the impact of rowing on their lives, and I think that that was something that I just was never going to stop doing. There wasn't anything daunting about it. It was just natural moving on.

row2k: Could you call it an opportunity to continue the work?

Morrow: A really good example was heading into the Beijing Olympic era. One of our top crews, a lightweight women's double, needed a coaching change, and I was offered up by Rowing Canada to be the coach, so I coached them. Two women for only seven months, but ended up going to the Beijing Olympics as an official coach. It was really quite an amazing experience, because these two athletes were really good, really motivated, and they won a bronze medal. And it was our first medal in Olympic lightweight rowing for women. So it worked out really well.

Morrow's 2008 LW2x pulled off an unlikely bronze in Beijing

I think a lot of times I was at the right place at the right time, and assignments would come up and I change my route. The same thing happened in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, I was drawn back in. You might almost call it project work with various crews.

row2k: When you when you have a career of your of your length and impact, are you able to identify any key moments or real highlights where everything came together for you? Were there any times that were that were truly spectacular or moving or profound?

Morrow: It's really hard to pinpoint one. There were several that were really rewarding and really exciting, and some of them were not at the international level. But I think the one that I keep getting drawn back to, because of a special connection we had, was the era from 1989 to 1992.

I was appointed as the head women's coach on January 1, 1990. And the women won three world titles in Vienna at the Worlds in 1991, in the pair, the four, and the eight. Six of the women doubled; they were in the pair and the eight, and the four and the eight. And then in the 1992 Olympics they came back and repeated as gold medalists in those three events. It was really amazing. They were the first Canadian women to win gold medals at the Olympics in rowing.

In 1992, the Canadian women won gold in the 2-, 4- and 8+, using only 8 athletes

I think because it was such a unique repeat performance, such an outstanding performance done with just eight women and a coxswain. It's hard to be world champions and then win the Olympic title; it's not the easiest thing to do. I think all of those little breakthroughs may make it the most memorable. There were a lot of other different athletes, different situations that were just as exciting.

row2k: Are there other things that you reflect on as successes that maybe aren't measurable in that way?

Morrow: There certainly were examples of success that weren't necessarily rated as successful performances. It's really funny, I periodically get asked, 'how were the teams so successful?' I tell them, 'let's get one thing straight here. We had a lot more failures than we had successes.' It wasn't as if every time we walked around the corner we had another success. Part of the whole coaching experience is that road to success has a lot of failures along the way. So it wasn't like everything that the rowing programs that I was involved with were highly successful.

It's how you rank success. I'll give you one example: I used to tell people that if someone came up to me and said 'oh, you coached an Olympic gold medalist, that's really amazing,' I'd quickly change the topic and not really get engaged with that. Because to me it was very important, but it's self-sold. But if someone came up to me and said, 'I met one of your ex-athletes and they're just a really fine person, or they were just so motivating, or they a good Canadian,' or whatever you want to say, that's when I feel really proud.

So what I always judge success on was, and it sounds corny as all, but building better character. And creating this situation where self-esteem was developed, and athletes learned something, and became better people. My definition of success had nothing to do with race results, it was more about the impact I had on their lives for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

Sometimes an ex-rower will come up and thank me just for something that happened 30 years ago, or how it was something that they found rewarding or benefited their parenting life, or their work environment, or their social environment, and that makes me feel really great. And I always wanted to coach that way too, it was it was less about winning and it was more about contributing to people's lives.

row2k: When you and I spoke in the late 1990s, I asked about the secret of rowing success in Canada, and your answer was something to the effect of 'we take the few people that we have and we treat them very well.'

Morrow: We don't have the numbers of athletes, and often we really struggle if we we're going to have a fast eight with the number six, seven, and eight seat, and making sure they were on par and contribute with our top five people. So we had to be really good with meager resources. And I'm not talking about financial resources, because sometimes we were quite well supported with sponsorships and government support. The challenge was more about human resources. We depended on a small number of great club coaches. I was always the lucky guy who was fed talent. The great work club coaches and club people in general did, and parents did, and teammates at clubs did, was a big part of the feeder system.

We also couldn't make any mistakes, and we had to do a really good job with a small number of athletes. We don't have big numbers to draw from, so we have to take is really use our relatively meager resources really well and try to treat people really well, and it quite frankly doesn't always work. There are always going to be some people that maybe they're not totally satisfied with the way the program worked or even how I ran things, but we tried very hard in that area.

row2k: It sounds like it like an almost stereotypically Canadian thing to say, but how did treating people well work out in a practical sense?

Morrow: I can only speak about what worked well for myself, and I think I was an obsessive communicator. When I was really hitting my stride, I think the athletes knew exactly what was expected of them all the time. For example, announcing the selection procedures at the start of the season, and sticking with them with is an example of that. Announcing the travel plan, what's expected technically, what's expected in terms of athletic performance like ergometer scores, I think just really communicating on a long term and daily basis was really important.

Doing that, I think that you create an environment where you have motivated athletes. And if you have motivated athletes they build a better team and they'll work very hard. So I think that open and regular communication was really key.

Treating people with respect as well, the idea that we were equals here. I find a lot of coaches talk about their crews, or treat their crews like it's kind of a Machiavellian theme - 'I'm really smart, and you don't know what's going on, and what I what I say and do is best for you.'

I also think that being humble was a big part of it. I never felt I was the world's smartest guy, and I'm just talking about myself right now. I always felt that a lot of people could teach me a lot, and especially the athletes. But we had a lot of guest coaches, and we used a lot of consultants and so on. So I think that that collegial approach, the teamwork approach, that everyone's opinion is valued, I think all these things contributed to some of the successes we had.

row2k: How has the rowing world changed since you started in 89-90?

Morrow: In my opinion the most important thing is the availability of technology. And I think it's taken some of the mystery out of it. We use a lot of biomechanical research now. Some of the things that I used to think I saw with my eye either got validated or they're not true. Technology takes us to a much higher level as it impacts on our coaching of technique, but also on our training programs, on our equipment.

If you if you don't stay on top of all the things that are available you do fall behind, simply because there is so much available. Even the ease of doing video work for example, and the things you can do with your phone, everything's so much easier communicating with the crews. It's almost too much information, you have to pick and choose.

In the old days, I used to phone up Concept2 to say 'this is the type of oar I want to order,' and there were about three options. And in my latter years I would phone up and say 'OK what do you recommend heavyweight women use,' because there are so many options.

The boat builders took it to another level, so they knew more than the coach. The knowledge out there is almost too much for the modern coach, so you have to use consultants, and it all comes from advanced technology.

row2k: For someone who has really achieved a lot with the human touch, has that availability of technology or the reliance on technology changed or complicated your coaching in any way?

Morrow: No, actually it simplified it, but you just had to make a decision to use these options. There are experts in nutrition, experts in sleep, experts in power and strength improvement. We did a lot of good work in recent years on prehab, so we really depended on our physiotherapists to prepare our athletes to not deal with injuries but stop injuries, so you had less lost training time. It has actually simplified our job even though the world has become more complex.

Morrow's methods and mentorship off younger coaches had a large impact across Canadian rowing

row2k: Did you have to push yourself, or how were you able to switch up when technology and information started to proliferate as it did?

Morrow: I started to use consultants a lot more, depended on other people to support me, asked a lot of questions, and experimented because sometimes the best way is to try. I think you just had to be open minded to try different things and it actually became quite easy rather than daunting.

row2k: Besides the proliferation of technology, what other changes have you seen in the world of rowing?

Morrow: I often tell a story, if you look at the top 10 women in the single or top 10 men in the single, how differently they row. I think the people have started to realize that technique is really influenced by rig and body build. I used to imagine, 30 years ago, by now we would have come up with the one best way to row. But in fact there is almost more diversity, so I've noticed quite a change in approach to techniques, a lot of different techniques and styles used by rowers. People compete differently, people race differently. In general stroke rates are higher; we used to use the word body of the race, now it's just a flat out sprint. People are going faster.

I think that coaches are way more educated--when I was starting out in rowing all the coaches in Canada were volunteers and there was no coaching certification program. The standard that's expected of coaches is much higher.

Regatta courses are fairer. There was a trend of building rowing courses, and they can be really unfair when you get cross wind. Fairness or racing committees are more aware of fair racing conditions, so races are now delayed when the when the water is unfair.

Athletes are more aware of things like nutrition and health care and sleep. Speeds are still going up, boats are still going a little bit faster. Maybe not huge breakthroughs but they're still going faster.

row2k: Over the last 15-20 years rowing, through the proliferation of the internet and live streaming and more accessibility of results and video and photos, rowing has become a little more 'present,' say in the world, a little more visible. Has that added to pressure on international or national coaches where people are watching a little more closely?

Morrow: That's a great question. I never felt pressure. I always had a private chuckle when coaches in rowing and all sport would talk about how they're burnt out or how they feel great pressure, but I never really got into that.

For me, I always tried to simplify it. I had two really important things in my life and the first one was my wife and four children, so I tried to be a good father. And the second thing was to try to be a good coach, and I didn't try to complicate it beyond that. And on top of that I always felt that I was lucky to coach. I was coaching bright young motivated healthy people, and I thought how great of a job that is.

I think if I was doing brain surgery or doing charitable work in a third world country where there's all kinds of issues - health issues and different types of issues - that's pressure.

row2k: So when it's the day of the Olympic semi-final or the Olympic final there's no pressure?

Morrow: No, I never felt that way. I just enjoy the moment. Whenever I could feel myself getting a little nervous, I thought to myself 'enjoy this, we're playing games here, and this is not life and death.'

After the 1996 Olympics the women's program won a gold, silver, and bronze in Atlanta. About three months after the games I was asked to speak at one of the Canadian Olympic Committee year end meetings, and I was speaking with another coach of another successful sport in Canada. I went up and introduced myself to the coach who didn't really know me, and he said to me, 'are you still burnt out? I've had a lot of trouble adjusting back into real life.' This was three months after the Olympics! I kind of looked at him, and I didn't want to say anything because I got off the plane from Atlanta in London, Ontario, I kind of hit the tarmac running. I was going to go spend some time with my family and I got back into university coaching, and there was no time to feel burnt out, or feel terrible, or have a down period. And here was this a coach that was still struggling three months after the Olympics that was tired and exhausted, and reflecting on whether they continue coaching.

I just never felt that way. I never felt the pressure. I just really enjoyed the moment. I tried to teach the rowers I coached to seize the moment and enjoy things. So it just wasn't part of my makeup. I'm not saying I was a super hero, it just was the way I felt. We're so lucky to coach these bright young motivated healthy people. I mean, what a great job. So how could you feel pressure?

row2k: What you've just described is I think what a lot of people nowadays are referring to as mindfulness. Do you feel like, by accident or design, you were practicing a form of that?

Morrow: In hindsight, definitely. I don't think I realized it at the time, it just seemed like a sensible way to operate. I believe in giving back, and that probably has something to do with my upbringing. You're probably right that is was a tactic that I determined worked best for me, and wouldn't necessarily work well for other people. Some people get very motivated by pressure, but I just never felt it. It just never really bothered me.

row2k: Was there a phase in your coaching where you learned to apply this?

Morrow: When I was younger I didn't have that self-control. You gain a certain wisdom as you get older, you gain information about yourself and how you can best be and how you can be the best coach. So I think I think it was part of my personal growth.

I used to find that I'd drive out the rowing boathouse from my home, and I realized that I was visualizing for 20 minutes in that car ride just planning for questions that might come up, situations that might come up, things that I wanted to say. And I realized that there was this kind of game I played in my mind to deal with it. So it became just a fun project, that's all it ever was, and trying to make things better for the rowers, and being a good guy.

row2k: In a sport where so much really is predicated on winning and success and speed, what advice would you give younger coaches or coaches who are just starting out as to how to straddle that divide between enjoying it and being present, and dealing with perhaps internal or external pressures having to perform?

Morrow: Try to park all that stuff and be task oriented, process oriented. That's what I try to do, take the little steps. Don't worry about the big the big picture just take the little steps, and just deal with small things and find the "need to do"s.

I often got a lot of good advice from senior coaches, because I think I was always listening more than telling in my early years. I did a fair amount of reading, when I was very young I read a lot on leadership, not just sports leaders but business leaders and political leaders. You have to find your own way to lead.

row2k: Will you continue to enjoy watching rowing?

Morrow: I think I'm a little less connected with the individuals but I'm still interested in performance and times. I used to say my job is my hobby, or my hobby is my job, so it's kind of been a lifetime hobby. We used to have a hard copy questionnaire for the Canadian Olympic team media guide, and they would say, what are your hobbies? And I put down 'family' and 'rowing.' It's so true, rowing has always been my hobby, and it's been a fun thing I do on the side. I'll always be interested.