Karsten to Be the Only Belarusian at World Champs

Belarus is due to be represented in the upcoming World Rowing Championships by a single athlete – the indefatigable woman sculler Ekaterina Karsten (Екатерина Карстен). The selection was announced by the country’s head rowing coach Uladzimyr Sinelshchykau (Уладзімір Сінельшчыкаў; Russian spelling Vladimir Sinelshchikov, Владимир Синельщиков) in the Belarusian Sport Panorama newspaper published in Russian. The interview with Sinelshchykau was posted on the newspaper’s website on 14 September and quoted by the Belarusian website Goals.by.

Sinelshchykau’s soundbites largely identical with those in the Sport Panorama interview appeared on the Poland Rowing Association website on 3 October.

The reasons for not sending more crews from Belarus to the World Championships are mainly financial, the coach suggested.

My Nomination of Vaclav Chalupa for the 2010 Thomas Keller Medal

I sent the following text to the FISA as a nomination proposal on 9 March 2010, the closing date for submissions. Chalupa's nomination as a finalist for this year's Thomas Keller Medal was finally published on the FISA web on 3 June and included quotes from my proposal as well as from someone else's submission. It was good to see that more people took the initiative to support Chalupa. Please, read further if you want to remember the highlights of this Czech man's life with rowing.

Main dates of the career:
1989-1993, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2007, 2009


Czech rower Vaclav Chalupa in 2009, the last year of his performance career. Source: YouTube screen grab.

1. Success at the international level, e.g. medal count taking level of competition into account:

Vaclav Chalupa Jr. (whose father, Vaclav Chalupa Sr., finished fifth in coxed pair in the 1964 Olympics) officially announced retirement from rowing after last year's world championships in Poznan, Poland. A Czech daily has characterised Chalupa's rowing career as going “from silver to silver” in a reference to the medals he took in his first (1989) and last (2009) senior world championships. During that time, Chalupa collected one Olympic silver (1992), five silver and three bronze medals from world championships (silver: 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 2009; bronze: 1995, 1998, 2001), and one gold from European championships (2007), in addition to four fourth places at world championships (1999, 2002, 2003, 2005). He has competed at six Olympic Games, from Seoul 1988 to Beijing 2008.