Belleville native going for gold at Olympics

By Marc Venema

Brian Price (centre front) with three of his teammates at the 2011 World Rowing Championships. Photo by Rowing Canada Aviron.

The local rowing community is cheering on one of their own at the London Olympics.

Belleville native Brian Price and the rest of his men’s eight rowing team raced their way into Wednesday’s final with a second place finish in their rowing repechage Monday morning.

“I was really excited about that,” said Maxine Walker, president of the Quinte Rowing Club, the club that Price is still officially registered with.

Price joined the club when he was a coxswain in high school for Moira Secondary School over 18 years ago. Since then he has gone on to win numerous gold medals at world championships and in 2008, his men’s eight team won gold at the Beijing Olympics.

Walker said she, along with other members of the club have high expectations for Wednesday’s final.

“It’s hard to know with rowing, I suspect they should medal for sure, it would be wonderful if they could get another gold medal,” Walker said.

“Those boats can be so close together and you just don’t know until they cross the finish line, which ones going to nose out the other.”

Walker said there’s a sense of pride knowing that a coxswain with the amount of success that Price has hails from her club.

“It’s very nice to be able to say ‘you know the coxswain from the Canadian crew is from our club’, it’s very exciting to do.

“I was away on the weekend (at a rowing event) with some kids and somebody said ‘Oh you’re from where Brian Price comes from’, so people know the club because of that so it gives us a little recognition too.”

Among Brian’s teammates are other rowers from the local area, including Jeremiah Brown, of Cobourg, and Rob Gibson and Will Crothers, who both hail from Kingston.

The final race is scheduled for 6:30 a.m. Belleville time, Wednesday morning.