HDA news, publicity, fundraising and events
An Olympic Response to a Charity Challenge
June 2009
In the current climate, to ask volunteers to donate £10,000 to a charitable cause seems a request too far. To then put a tight deadline – just 10 days in which to hit that target - seems folly. It is no wonder then that Olympian Sarah Winckless and her partner in this venture, Victoria Wood, are blown away by the phenomenal generosity their campaign has received in just 36 hours.
“We’re already half-way there” explains Sarah, “and I feel like we’re on a runaway train. We now have absolutely no idea where this is going to go, but it’s only going to get more exciting.”
“We’ve only just lit the blue touch paper and look where we are. The power of friendships and the internet has given us an immediate global response, wait until we start shouting about it. Bring it on” says Vic.
This being Huntington’s Awareness Week and with the British and Irish Huntington’s Associations announcing their new Alliance only yesterday. Sarah and Vic have decided that the first £5,000 will go to the Scottish Huntington’s Association, and after that every pound will be split equally between the four Associations.
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Background detail
Sarah Winckless, a spearhead of the recent successes of the GB women’s squad - double World Champion and Olympic bronze medallist - retired gracefully from the sport just two months ago. In June she is back in a boat at Henley Women’s Regatta - the premier women’s rowing event of the British calendar which attracts entries from all over the globe. For Sarah it’s a first as despite success in almost every aspect of the sport she never once rowed at that regatta. She is back racing in a double sculls for a very special purpose and a new challenge.
The irresistibly good reason for her return had to be something greater in Sarah’s life than just competing to be the best of the best. She will be rowing for the first time to raise funds for Huntington’s disease, from which her mother suffers, and for which Sarah is gene-positive. The target is not to win (although tell her that and you will be disabused), but to raise a minimum of £10,000 in the 10 days from today (9th June 2009), for the Scottish Huntington’s Association, for which she is a devoted patron, and the UK and Ireland Huntington’s Alliance.
With Sir Steve Redgrave’s precedent set (“shoot me if you see me near a boat again” announced before he promptly went on to win his 5th successive Olympic gold medal), its clear that declared retirements from rowers are not always to be believed. And so it seems with Sarah - for while she is not planning a return to international duties, she is planning to line up on the start of Henley Women’s Regatta for her first time ever on June 20th, staking her hard-won reputation in a barely-formed, last-minute double scull. Her partner is retired veteran oarswoman and mother, Victoria Wood.
“We formed this plan just a couple of days ago”, Sarah explains. “We were both tired with rowing being a joy only if you win and all the pressures that go with it. But rowing to win funding for Huntington’s is a whole new motivation, and we knew that the sorority of the Henley Women’s Regatta would make this £10,000 in 10 days seem possible. The support of the Regatta and the Copas family behind it has been unstinting, and we are both moved and slightly terrified by what we have started”.
Her partner in the boat, Victoria, added “Sarah’s told she’s amazing all the time and rightly so, but rowing with an old trout like me is a refreshing burst of mediocrity for her. We have both brought utter madness into the boat, and this is carried into this fundraising adventure in spades. And we need it - we want to compete for as long as we can in an elite event at an elite regatta and in doing so, raise £10K in 10 days. We know the longer we stay in the event, the more money we will raise. The pressure to succeed is a little disquieting, to say the least but that’s the reason we are doing it - because it is difficult and a real challenge”.
What’s clear is that both of them have their gritted teeth into this venture, and have just one outcome in mind for Sunday 21st June, when the regatta reaches its climax. For once in the sporting lives of this pair there is one thing more important than winning.
Read and donate here: www.justgiving.com/pullforhuntingdons
Henley Women’s Regatta, supported by the Copas Family and Partnership, is held at Henley-on-Thames from Friday 19 June to Sunday 21 June 2009. Web: www.hwr.org.uk
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