There’s only OOOOONE David Tanner… (At least let’s hope so)

It’s an all too frequent conversation on the banks of Henley Royal Regatta:

“How is it that despite the incredible strength and depth of the US college rowing system, the US National Team doesn’t dominate in quite the same way?”

The US women’s 8+ are obvious exceptions to this having annihilated the field a few weeks ago at Dorney and this isn’t to say that the standard of US National Team rowing is in any way poor, because it’s not, but here in the UK we’re clearly making better use of the resources we’ve got available.

Hence this is possibly why the US have created a new post for a Performance Director to try to manage the talent in the US and emulate the kind of system that David Tanner has spent several decades moulding into it’s current, very successful, form.

Without knowing him personally, one can only hope that David is as unique a person as I’m led to believe and that USRowing are only able to find a mediocre tribute act otherwise the rowing medal table might look a bit different in Rio…

(Thankfully what the US don’t know is that DT has probably already been to Rio and booked the hotel, food, accommodation, flights & best boat racks… shhhh… our secret!)

Caversham wasn’t built in a day!