Mike Spracklen, the eight’s whisperer

At 74, Spracklen still displays the enthusiasm of a junior and an everlasting passion for rowing as illustrated by the poems he writes in his spare time. One of these poems he dedicated to his eight on the eve of their winning performance at the Beijing Olympics.

At Karapiro, Mike Spracklen is the coach of the Canadian men’s eight, the team’s flagship boat, which he steered to Olympic gold in Beijing as well as in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics. These two medals feature among the most precious ones of his very long career.

He has remained at the highest level for more than 30 years, in addition to his years as a rower in the early sixties. When asked how many medals he has won at World Championships or Olympic Games, Spracklen looks up to the sky and says he must be close to thirty from international competitions.

Mike Spracklen was destined to row. He was born in Marlow, just a few miles away from Henley-on-Thames in Great Britain, also the birth place of Steve Redgrave. The five-time Olympic Champion is the first great athlete Spracklen worked with, starting back in 1979.

“I immediately saw that Redgrave would be a grand champion,” says Spracklen. “He was physically very strong, had the necessary coordination and was serious and conscientious in training sessions. He was in athletics before and succeeded in everything he did. He had everything and wanted to make it.”

When asked about Spracklen, Redgrave says: “Mike was very strong technically as a trainer. If the training sessions were physically very hard, it was mainly because of the number of miles we had to do to be technically fine tuned.”  Redgrave adds: “He really is a very nice guy. We had a very good relationship and became friends.”

From Great Britain, in 1990 Spracklen was offered a position with the Canadian team. He took it up without hesitation, thereby taking the Canadian men’s eight as well as single sculler, Silken Laumann’s destiny into his hands. Laumann comments on how Spacklen coached her back to success after her serious injury shortly before the Games in 1992: “Mike restarted with me as if nothing happened, without any preferential treatment. It really helped me because I could think and act as if everything was just normal.” Laumann miraculously took bronze at Barcelona.

But that year, Spracklen’s big success was the victory of the men’s eight which featured Derek Porter, who then also became World Champion in the men’s single sculls the following year.

By then, however, Spracklen had moved on and was working with the United States team who had asked Spracklen to help them get that men’s eight world title that they had been chasing since 1987 and Olympic title that had eluded them since 1964. He partly succeeded. The US men’s eight won at the World Championships in 1994, but gold eluded them at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

Spracklen’s American contract was not renewed and he went back to Great Britain as head coach of the women’s squad.

“The worst years of my life,” says Spracklen, with his eyes sparkling with mischief behind his glasses. “It was unpleasant. Most of the girls were complaining all the time and they didn’t like training. Looking back, I think today they had the feeling they were not supported by the federation and that created antagonisms. But I also worked with extraordinary girls such as Miriam Batten and Gillian Lindsay (World Champions in 1998)”.

Spracklen returned to Canada in 2001 and naturally chose to train the men’s eight. “Because it’s the king of boats, because you have the biggest number of rowers and I like the concept of a team.”

Spracklen met with success again. The Canadian men’s eight snapped up world titles in 2002, 2003 and 2007 and, most importantly, the Olympic title at Beijing.  More than ever, Spracklen is the eight’s whisperer and when he is asked about his secret, he smiles and reflects for a while before answering: “It’s keeping the trust of the athletes and a series of things play a role in this, your experience, your knowledge, psychology … ”

Mike Spracklen has mastered these factors during his fabulous career and he remains one of the leading coaches today. His track record may be enriched further on Lake Karapiro waters this week.