ROWING: Who is Richard Parr? The Canadian took over as the full-time professional performance director of the Irish Amateur Rowing Union last year, arriving from New Zealand where he was junior high performance co-ordinator, but infighting before his appointment grabbed the headlines and he has not gone out of his way to blow his own trumpet since.
Last night he set up a meeting with Dublin-based women athletes at Commercial Rowing Club, an early step towards building a programme aimed at producing Irish heavyweight and lightweight crews for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. This is a man who takes a long view.
Performance director is the kind of catch-all title that could cover any number of actual roles. In the case of the lightweight rowers, Parr immediately acknowledges that Thor Nilsen is in charge of this programme. Tony O'Connor has been officially chosen as his assistant, pending the sanction of next week's meeting of the national executive of the IARU.
Parr's own role is thus limited in the area of short-term aims, but he expects to effectively become responsible for results at international level in every other area. And the very absence of long-term planning for heavyweight oarsmen and oarswomen in this country and for lightweights beyond Athens means that if he performs, he could be very influential indeed.
He knows he will be judged by results and says baldly that professional coaches or managers will not keep their job if they do not produce results or put in place a strategy to produce results.
When he begins to outline his philosophy of coaching and how to bring out the best in athletes, his zeal is impressive. In a cleverly-chosen example he cites what he says are the words of two-time world champion Sam Lynch: "Winning a world title is simple, but it is certainly not easy."
When athletes came to Parr in his role of overseeing junior and then under-21 rowing in New Zealand and asked for trials he says he asked them if they wanted to be in the country's crew. They would hesitate a little. Well they just wanted a trial, but yes that was the aim. And did they want to win with that crew? Hesitantly again, yes. And did they want to win all the way to a world title? Yes. So what they wanted to be was the best in the world.
This left many nervous, but the idea was to challenge athletes to be the best they could be.
While not every athlete can be a world champion, success for a coach is "to provide the opportunity for every athlete to discover something special in themselves".
In terms of specific aims, qualifying boats for Athens in lightweight categories and in both lightweight and heavyweight groups for Beijing and medalling with some of those crews will be the measure of success.
An Ontario native and the son of a nuclear engineer, Parr came to rowing when he took up coxing after his soccer-playing days ended when he shattered his leg in a motorbike accident. Now, one of his key words when he talks of success in his six years in New Zealand is "retention" - that young rowers stay in the sport.
One of his charges, Paula Twining, was a silver medallist in the New Zealand quadruple scull at last year's senior World Championships, only a year out of junior ranks. But the main thing is that clubs and coaches, like successful under-23 boss Sebastiaan Peeters at national level, give athletes every chance they can to be the best they can.
A strong junior representation will be part of the big Cork head of the river tomorrow at Inniscarra, where development continues, with dressing-rooms and boat bays to be handed over in mid-April.
Other news from Cork is that Denis "Chopper" O'Regan has confirmed that he is to run for the post of honorary secretary of the IARU, the post soon to be vacated by the universally-liked Jimmy Bermingham.
The Laganside head is also on tomorrow, in Belfast.
