The Red Shirts

The volunteers at the World Rowing Championships were recognised by their red T-Shirts, and soon became famous at the lake. I was lucky enough to be a member of this 700-strong team. There were 5 main volunteer teams: the on- water teams; starts and marshalling, the off-water teams; looking after athletes and their belongings, the reception teams who looked after the spectators and media and drove golf carts around, the transport teams who spent their days away from the lake driving various people around, and finally the accommodation teams who worked miles from the lake looking after the athletes' accommodation and signing them in and out.

I managed to work in 4 of these teams; I started my week working on the water as a stake boat boy, i.e. holding the boats all day long, this job had its perks in that you were given the opportunity to hold world famous crews but the pain of lying on a gas canister in your bouyancy aid soon got too much. A difference of opinion with the team leader helped me to move teams fairly quickly after just 3 days of this job, I moved from this job to the middle section of the lake with the reception team, a fancy name for checking people's tickets and telling various people that they had to leave. This job lasted me for the rest of the week, although I have said I was on 4 teams and that only counts for two.

A number of volunteers, including myself, would work outside hours in certain areas such as bag drop in the evenings or on the pontoons in the early morning. The reasons for this were that it gave us chance to be at the heart of the event with other volunteers and generally having a good time. The fourth team which I joined was the accommodation team: whilst staying at Royal Holloway College, I was roped into working on the desk there with the other volunteers. A strange mixture of people that formed an awkward and yet cohesive team; between the six of us there were two of us under twenty-five, one in his thirties and three in the fifty-five plus category, but nevertheless we all stuck together and have stayed in touch. This is the point that I think the world champs proved, that it didn't matter who you were, rower or non-rower, or your age be it seventeen or seventy-seven years old, we all worked together to make sure the event ran well, whilst having fun. My time at the champs taught me a lot. As well as this I had endless amounts of fun all around the lake and at the campus, meeting many athletes from teams such as the Algerians and Cubans who were just happy to be near a semi-final or the mighty Russians who were often disappointed with anything less than gold.

If you ever have the chance to work at an event such as this, then it is honestly worth while, essentially nine days of solid work but resulting in a lot of fun and lots to be learnt. With two more major rowing events in the next six years, one of the world cup regattas, and the Olympics, seize the opportunity to volunteer and be ready and willing!

Toby Johnson - Captain of Boats