Surf Rowing Olivia Toldi Photos By,Shelby Hayden Craig

Find out what it takes to do it for the girls in the Navy Australian Surf Rowers League on a stage so-long regarded the domain of the meathead beach alpha male.

Why would a young all-women’s crew take on a sport that’s so rough-and-tumble, many so-called tough blokes pass it up? There are only five young women in the country who are qualified to answer: the only female “sweep” on an all-female under-23s crew, Beck Hamilton, Grace Chapman, Kristen Raper, Katie Eynon and Olivia Toldi, who row in the Under-23s for Coogee SLSC in Sydney. We pulled Toldi, one of the “engine room” rowers, aside during an early (really early) training run to find out what it takes to do it for the girls in the Navy Australian Surf Rowers League on a stage so-long regarded the domain of the meathead beach alpha male.

GIRL POWER

“We’re an under-23s crew, so we’re not really unusual in that sense, but because we have Beck Hamilton on board for us, we’re the only crew with a female sweep. All the other all-girl crews we row against have male sweeps. There’s about 30 under-23s girls crews across Australia.”

COOGEE-MOOKS

“Our team used to be made up of girls who rowed together down in Mollymook on the NSW south coast. We all gradually migrated up to Sydney for uni and then got back together again. One day Beck said to us, ‘I’ll take you girls!’ She’d only been sweeping for a couple of years. Then things just kind’ve fell into place. Over the years we’ve had more and more Mollymook girls come up. These days we have Katie and Kristen from the north side of Sydney, but Grace and I are both from Mollymook. We used to joke about being the ‘Coogee-mooks’. We can’t really do that anymore because we have our precious north-side girls ... Nah, it’s all good! We love them. Kristen makes a massive effort. She drives from Avalon to Coogee every training morning. She’ll do that three times a week ... She makes such a commitment.”