Dominic Monypenny competing
in the arms and shoulders men’s
single sculls at the 2007 World
Rowing Championships in
Munich, Germany…
… and later competing in a
Men’s Sitting Cross-Country
Skiing event at the 2010
Vancouver Winter Paralympic
Games.
© 2010 Robert Prezioso/Getty Images
Dominic Monypenny from Australia has been
a bit like a shark out of water since hanging up
his oars after the Paralympic Rowing Regatta
in Beijing. The two-time World Champion in
the arms and shoulders single sculls (2005,
2006) left his home in Tasmania to move to the
Rocky Mountains in Colorado, USA, where he
began to pursue his next Paralympic sport –
cross-country skiing.
Competing in three cross-country races (10km,
15km and Sprint), Monypenny describes his
initiation since 2009 into the most fiercely
competitive and long-established Paralympic
sport: “I was thrown headlong into my first
World Cup after only three and a half months.
I was ‘slaughtered’.” This year Monypenny
clawed his way through the field of up to
45 athletes for a season best 9th place in the
10km distance.
Skiing also brought a whole new challenge of
racing on a common track as opposed to divided
lanes as in rowing, particularly in the sprint rounds
where mass starts involve clashing of skis, poles
and elbows. To adapt to the rigours of the sport,
Monypenny trained “full-on” in extreme cold and
altitude in Colorado with his coach Dan Weiland
and a team of young athletes.
While Monypenny’s rowing training undoubtedly
provided a foundation of fitness for skiing,
Monypenny reflects that the physiological
demands required to compete over approximately
45 minutes for Nordic versus five minutes for
rowing are quite different. Something, he says,
his physique has not been able to hide.
“It broke my heart after nine months of intense
training when an Australian official who came to
watch a competition said how I’d lost my rowing
shoulders and arms!” laughs the spirited
Monypenny who showed his sense
of post-competition
adventure in Beijing by
taking on the Great Wall
of China in his wheelchair.
A past training camp in
Wanaka, New Zealand, left
Monypenny still longing for
water: “I really must row in
that idyllic environment.”
A rower since 1983, Paola
Protopapa of Italy won two
national titles in the women’s pair
before a road accident resulted in
a locked left arm. No longer able to
row normally, she took up sailing
instead. It wasn’t until adaptive >
