Broken Oars, Episode 43: Small Ergs, Big Dreams on Leeds, Rowing and Conquering Social Media

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We're blessed on this podcast.

 

We get to talk about the sport we love with the best and the brightest in the business. We've met heroes and heroines. We've been privileged to hear not just about lives behind the oar, but how much rowing means to people, and how it's shaped and guided lives.

 

Unfortunately, all good things come to end - and it is with a glad, sad heart that we announce the end of Broken Oars podcast. 

 

The end of Broken Oars podcast?

 

Yes.

 

Lewin and I are no strangers to great pairs. We are one, for one thing, and we both have them. We've also seen Murray and Bond and Hodge and Reed in the flesh. But we've never met a more natural pair than Ethan and Archie, the masterminds behind the best rowing social media account currently in operation, the awesome Small Ergs, Big Dreams Instagram account:

 

www.instagram.com/smallergs_bigdreams/

 

In this episode, we discover the thinking behind the Small Ergs Big Dreams account; find out why they are not associated with University of Leeds Boat Club (why, UOL, you're missing a trick. These lads are social media gold); and discover why swords and bumps should be introduced to the Olympic rowing regatta. We hear about life in Leeds (apparently, we both should have done our degrees there, we missed out); find out how two people who weren't even born when one of us started rowing (ahem) got into the sport, found it at again at university and how they juggle life with coursework and rowing ambitions (Henley - incoming).

 

We know here on Broken Oars that at a certain age, the older generation is supposed to sneer at the younger. We're supposed to say things like 'in my day' and be sarcastic about modern youth with their TikToks and their Snapchats and their weird slang and their terrible music where you 'can't hear what they're singing' and their strange catches and their abysmal finishes.

 

It's part of the natural trajectory from youthful idealism to tired, shop-worn old cynicism. Wordsworth did it - but he's a poet, so sod him. Redgrave did it - travelling from fierce young iconoclast who'd die before rowing in the four in 84 to pillar of the Establishment (the rebels it can't kill, Britain simply knights).

 

But Lewin and I can't sneer and snarl. Because frankly, we've met the future, and it's in safe hands.

 

It is not often that Lewin (posh, southern, preternaturally competitive) and I (northern, illiterate, pretenaturally competitive) ever admit defeat (Green Lake only beat us because they were better than us). But on this occasion, we have to. Ladies and Gentlemen, we're laying our microphones down because we can't top this.  We've met the mighty Small Ergs, Big Dreams - our work is done.

 

The future's golden, the future is at university in Leeds.

 

Stern pair?  Swim for home. Ethan and Archie are subbing in.

 

Enjoyed this episode?

 

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Thank You!

 

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