Olympic medalist Dan Walsh honored at Fenway

 

 

By Jason Kornwitz

Former Northeastern rower Dan Walsh, who won a bronze medal in Beijing at this year’s Summer Olympics as a member of the U.S. men’s heavyweight eight crew, was honored at Fenway Park during a pregame ceremony featuring 20 Olympians with New England ties.

He was one of seven medalists who threw out a ceremonial first pitch before the Sept. 1 Red Sox game against the Baltimore Orioles.

Walsh, who threw his pitch to Red Sox first baseman Sean Casey, said his medal-winning Olympic experience was surreal.

“Standing on the podium when they came out with a tray full of medals, I couldn’t believe that one of them was mine,” Walsh said, adding that his award will be permanently displayed at Northeastern’s Henderson Boathouse. “I want to show other athletes that they can go from Northeastern to the medal stand,” he said.

Walsh recently traveled to Chicago’s Millennium Park for a taping of an Olympics-themed episode of the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” Among the more than 150 Olympians featured on the program, airing on Sept. 8, were Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Kobe Bryant, Lisa Leslie and Dara Torres.

When word spread that Walsh had earned a spot on the U.S. heavyweight eight crew, congratulatory phone calls and text messages started piling up. The excitement he felt contrasted with his experience as an alternate for the eight-man crew in the 2004 Olympics, in Athens. Four years ago, telling himself that he could be called upon at any moment, he had the bittersweet pleasure of standing on the sidelines and watching his teammates win gold.

This year, while preparing for the games, he said simply, “I want to race and repeat our gold medal performance.”

The 6-foot-7, 220-pound Walsh, a 2002 graduate, has been a member of the U.S. Senior National Team for the past eight years. He finished second in pairs rowing at the 2004 Olympic trials, won the bronze medal at the World Championship in 2006 and finished fourth in 2007 in the men’s eight. Walsh won gold medals in both the eights and the fours at the 2007 U.S. Rowing National Championship.

During the Olympics, Walsh controlled the five seat in the boat, a position awarded to the biggest, strongest team member. But strength, Walsh said, is not necessarily the most important attribute for a rower.

“It helps to be strong,” he said, “but rowing is also a very technical sport. I could be really strong but not efficient with the oar. Strength is not transferred to boat speed. It’s more important to row well than to have tremendous group strength.”

Walsh called his experience at Northeastern “the best thing that could have happened for my rowing career.” As a Husky, he said, “I learned that rowing is a team sport and there can’t be any heroes. You have to work with your teammates or your boat will not go fast.”

While at Northeastern, Walsh received the Parker Award for outstanding freshman in 1998 and was dubbed Outstanding Varsity Oarsman in 1999 and 2001. He was named to the U.S. World Championship team twice and helped his team finish sixth at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championship Regatta and third at the Eastern Sprints in 2001.

During Olympics training in Princeton, N.J., on Lake Carnegie and Lake Mercer, Walsh could be found either rowing, eating or napping, he said. He and his teammates took to the water seven days a week, twice a day, for 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 hours at a time. Each day, their boat covered about 24 miles.

Two times a week, the team hit the gym, concentrating on power-oriented compound exercises such as cleans, dead lifts and pull-ups.

Training is Walsh’s favorite aspect of rowing. His least favorite, too.

“I love training,” he said. “It’s intense and takes a lot of fortitude to stick with it. And it’s the worst, because it hurts like hell. During the first training camp at the Olympics training center, the power lifters told us we work too hard.”

But Walsh is familiar with hard work. He’s a former employee of Gentle Giant, a moving company based in Somerville, Massachusetts, that’s known for hiring rowers. Larry O’Toole, a former member of Northeastern’s varsity eight-man crew, founded the company.

Walsh said moving is similar to rowing in the physical stress it puts on the body, and also for its mental demands.

Like rowing, he said, “the competitive nature of moving makes it fun.”