From Farm To France, Coleman Enjoying Oarsome Journey

New South Wales Institute of Sport (NSWIS) scholarship holder Lucy Coleman couldn’t have been further away from her dream destination – Paris, France – in the lead up to the Australian rowing championships if she tried.

The 24-year-old, who describes the idea of winning a 2024 Paris Olympic medal as ‘the ultimate’, spent her increasingly limited free time on her family’s 16,000-acre farm in Coolatai, a speck on the map 640 kilometres north of Sydney, and home to 179 people.

While there, Coleman helped her family and their team of workers harvest the last of the summer’s sorghum crop – a grain that’s used in breakfast cereals and flour – and she took pride in pointing out the farm is an enterprise in which three generations of her family all get their hands dirty.

“Dad will be on the ‘header’ . . . the harvester . . .  and my job is to drive a tractor with the chaser bin and to collect the grain,” said Coleman of her day’s hard yakka. “My grandpa is the chief truckdriver, so he’ll cart the grain off to the silos on our property for storage before taking the rest to [the grain corporation] where it’s sold to the milling companies.

“We have a couple of workers, and there’ll be another header going, so it is a big operation.”

While the harvest might not quite match the adrenaline rush of winning a widely celebrated world cup silver medal for her nation – as Coleman and her lightweight double crewmate Anneke Reardon did last year – her relaxed tone suggests the time spent on the farm is nutritious for the soul.

“When I do get back here it’s very special . . . I love it,” she said ahead of the Australian rowing championships which start in Perth on Monday. “It’s mainly dryland cropping. Sorghum is our summer crop, and in winter we’ll grow wheat and barley, chickpeas – and we have a few cattle on the side.”

Her time under the wide blue sky might have also evoked a sense of awareness, because while Coleman makes no secret that medaling at Paris is her dream, and that she and Reardon could qualify for that this year if they finish in the top seven at the world championships, she’s also speaks about the importance of ‘enjoying the journey’ needed to get there.

“It’s taken a lot of reflection and putting things into perspective to come to that conclusion,” she said. “It’s so hard in rowing because when you achieve something it feels as though the goal posts are immediately moved, so it’s possible to chase the next goal without processing how far you’ve come, or to even reflect on the achievement you’ve just made.

                                           

“I think that’s important to do in the high performance lifestyle . . . one where you’re very performance driven and extremely self-critical. It’s taken a few highs, and a few hardships, for me to realise that. And, yes, I’m still working to live by that . . . I’m a work in progress.”

Coleman, who is studying aeronautical engineering at Sydney University, attended Coolatai’s primary school until she went to board at St Hilder’s on the Gold Coast as a Year Eight student. It was there that she was introduced to rowing – and the sport literally opened the world to her.

“There’s definitely no rowing out here,” said Coleman as she surveyed the acres of purple-headed crops and lowing cattle.

“In Year 10, I made the school’s First VIII – and that was earlier than others – and I joined a club to do some extra rowing because I thought to myself: ‘I might be OK at this.’

“When it came to sport, I always felt like I was a jack of all trades and master of none because I did so many sports and loved doing everything. However, rowing seemed to be the one that could take it a little bit further.

“It was so novel, and my school had a very good program. All my friends did it, and I think the environment made it easy for me to stick to rowing. Making the First VIII hooked me even more. That was really motivating.

Her academic prowess – allied with her athletic potential – provided Coleman with the opportunity to travel to America where she studied mechanical engineering. However, it seems  her most telling lesson while at Oklahoma came outside of the classroom.

“I take pride in my studies,” she said. “I ended up leaving [America] after two years. I loved the study, loved the school, but the rowing program wasn’t right for me, and I really wanted to take it a bit further.”

She returned to Australia in 2019 and successfully transferred to Sydney University, but in 2020 her rowing was disrupted by the COVID pandemic.

“That was my last year of competing in the under 23s, but the pandemic halted all competition,” she said. “I went home for so long, and it was a turning point. I wondered ‘have I majored out now?’ ‘Do I call it out and keep going . . . try for the seniors?’”

When life returned to normal Sydney University’s coach urged Coleman to give her career ‘two more weeks’. With a world cup medal now in her keeping, Coleman is grateful she did.

“I performed well under his guidance and was invited to the National Training Centre [NTC],” she said. “I was learning so much; a big sponge soaking up everything. I felt so green, now I’m going into my third season . . . the time has flown.

“It’s such a great culture, we all get along so well, but it’s unique to be training alongside your competition for part of the season and then you become a team. We have some of the world’s best rowers which makes it a competitive environment to train in. It’s a great place to be.”

The Pride of Coolatai also credited her NSWIS scholarship for helping her scale heights she never imagined as a small girl on a cropping farm.

“The support network NSWIS provides makes it possible to do all of this,” she enthused.

“The wellbeing team and the education teams played a big role in helping me to settle in when I returned [to Australia] for university – it was smack bang in the semester – and they were awesome.

“I love the NSWIS strength and conditioning coaches; our training sessions at NSWIS are tremendous. It’s a great little community.”

Daniel Lane, NSWIS