AS a kid, Dungog’s Spencer Turrin thought the only chance he had to wear the green and gold of Australia in the sporting arena might be as a Wallabies prop.
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“I was never that good at sport growing up,” Turrin said. “I was a bit of a fat little boy, so I don’t know, I always thought I’d probably try to play for the Wallabies and be a front rower for them, because I was pretty fat,” he laughed. “But I’ve trimmed out a bit since then.”
On Tuesday, the 24-year-old leaves for competitions and training in Europe ahead of his Olympic rowing debut in Rio in August. The next time he steps foot on Australian soil, he hopes to have an Olympic medal in his keeping.
Turrin, who has been based at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra since 2012, is all but certain to compete in the men’s pairs with friend and Sydney Rowing Club pairs partner Alex Lloyd. Turrin and Lloyd had been part of the Australian coxless fours, taking two silvers and a bronze medal at the past three world titles as well as gold at World Cup regattas. However, they are now the likely pairs crew, as long as they maintain form at World Cups in Lucerne, Switzerland (May 27-29), and Poznan, Poland (June 17-19), and in training at Australia’s base in Varese, Italy.
“I was hoping to get in the fours,” Turrin said. “I’ve been in it for the last few years and I’ve been trying to build something there, so I was a little disappointed. I can’t really complain too much, I’m still in with a shot of going to the Olympics and hopefully I’ll do well there in the pairs. We’ve never tested ourselves in the pairs against the best, so it will be a challenge to see where we are compared to other countries.”
Turrin was born and raised in Dungog until high school, when he moved to attend St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, in Sydney. It was there that he started his unlikely path to elite rowing.
“I gave everything a go growing up – a bit of cricket, soccer, athletics, rugby at school, but rowing was the one I was best at. I never knew anything about it really. I just saw it at school and thought it looked cool. All the people getting out on the water on Sydney Harbour. I thought, why not give it a go while I’m in the big smoke.”
He said everything in his life apart from rowing had been put on hold over the past four years to get to Rio.
“I made some under-age teams for Australia and I was overseas with Alex [Lloyd], just watching the London Olympics in 2012,” he said. “Just watching people we’d had some exposure to, some of the older guys around rowing, we thought we could get there maybe and we should keep pushing on with this and see if we could make the next Olympics, and here we are, still together.”
Despite his time away, Turrin still feels the support and pride from home.
“It’s always good to get home to Dungog,” he said. “My folks are still up there and I get back as much as I can. I’ve still got mates at home and they are really supportive. When I’m competing overseas, they go around to Mum and Dad’s or somewhere they have Foxtel and watch it together.”
New Zealand’s defending Olympic champions, Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, will be hot favourites in Rio and Turrin was realistic about his and Lloyd’s goals.
“We’re definitely not going over there just for the good times, we want to go well,” Turrin said.
“The Kiwi pair have been around for a long time and are unbeaten for seven years. Second and third place has swapped around a fair bit over the last four years, and that’s the goals for us. If we could get on the podium for one of those spots, we’d be stoked with that, but for anyone to beat the Kiwis that would be huge.
“At this point in our careers, we’re still pretty young, we’d be stoked to just get on the podium. We just need to keep our heads down and keep working hard.”
