He was a stern taskmaster but the best kind. Mike Spracklen got results.
When any accounting of the greatest coaches in Island sporting history is taken, rowing’s Mike Spracklen’s name belongs in that pantheon from Lester Patrick in hockey and Ken and Kathy Shields in basketball to Randy Bennett in swimming.
Spracklen’s former athletes invited their former mentor back to Elk Lake this weekend for a reunion involving the golden era of Canadian rowing.
Spracklen’s Canadian crews won men’s Olympic gold in the eight in 1992 at Barcelona and 2008 at Beijing and silver at London in 2012, the Canadian four silver at Athens in 2004 and he guided Silken Laumann to her lauded comeback-from-the-brink women’s singles bronze medal at Barcelona in 1992.
Spracklen also guided the Canadian men’s eight to world championship titles in 2002, 2003 and 2007, the fours to the world title in 2003 and Laumann to the world championship in 1991.
“The greatest joy in life for me was not Olympic gold but the special people I met on my way and the memories of them I hold,” Spracklen has said.
An Evening With Mike Spracklen included his former athletes rowers and others from the rowing community hosting a night to honour the coaching legend.
The 86-year-old from Marlow, England, loved his sport, loved to row and loved to teach others to row. He was driven and he drove his athletes.
Spracklen believed in volume training and that the many more kilometres spent on Elk Lake training than competitors around the world spent at their venues would be rewarded.
They were and usually in a big way, as attested by Spracklen’s staggering results list that few in the sport can match.
“He always said anyone can write a hard program but it’s convincing athletes to do it,” said Kevin Light, a member of Spracklen’s 2008 Beijing Olympics gold-medallist eights crew.
His rowers bought in because he was Mike Spracklen.
“He was as close to a parent as you could get,” said Light.
“He was someone you trusted as a leader. Someone who helped you achieve things you didn’t know how to on your own, while giving you belief in yourself.
“He had a sound technical knowledge of the sport and how boats move.
“He understood how to motivate people to train and combined that with an understanding of how and why boats move fast and how to race.”
Spracklen was inducted into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
