The postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was unsettling for most New Zealand rowers – but proved incredibly timely for Jack Lopas.
The Yale student is now poised to be part of the NZ team at Tokyo after being named recently in the elite men’s team with crewmate Chris Harris in the double sculls boat.
Lopas has always had Olympic ambitions but thought the 2024 Games in Paris would be his time.
“Then with the Olympics being delayed, and sports not happening at the Ivy League schools because of Covid, I was able to take a semester off and then come back here to join the New Zealand team,” Lopas said at Lake Karapiro this week.
“[It’s] very much quicker than I thought,” the 22-year-old said of his progression into the NZ team.
“I thought if I got back here, did my best, put some good times in on the water that’d put me in contention. I came back in November, did the quarantine, trained at home during December and then joined the team on January 4.”
Lopas rapidly made his mark by winning the men’s single sculls at the national championships at Lake Ruataniwha in February, heading home John Storey, Chris Harris and Mahe Drysdale, and teamed with Tom Mackintosh to win the double sculls.
“I was pretty ecstatic with what happened at nationals.
“It showed a lot of the dark hours on the erg and the stationary bike back in America in my apartment during Covid restrictions were really starting to pay off.
“Being able to line up against some of the great rowers and show what I could do gave me a good indication of where I could go.”
Where Lopas did go in 2017 from Christchurch was to one of the word’s most prestigious universities.
“I headed to Yale to join the heavyweight crew team there.
“It was great for my enjoyment of rowing – getting back into a team culture, getting away from the smaller boats and very individualised training. It was cool to join a big team – I’d come from a background of a lot of rugby and it really emphasised the culture and team spirit I think I thrive on.
“Coming out of school, I was only 18, it would have been pretty young to go into full-time rowing so I thought I should get more tools on my belt for the things I want to do in life after sport and that’s what Yale offered me in terms of a student-first focus.”
Lopas was aware that would put him out of the loop for selection for New Zealand while he completed his degree at the Ivy League college, as Rowing NZ policy was not to select athletes based overseas.
“The attitude was kind of like, ‘we really want you to stay, we want you to go through our pathway set’. But it’s definitely developed over the years, with the change in the number of people heading over to the States and also the calibre of athletes via the recruiting processes.
“So my doubles partner Ollie Maclean [at the University of California, Berkeley] and I were the first people to row for New Zealand while being based at a university overseas.”
The duo won silver in the double sculls at the under-23 world champs in 2019, after being part of the quad which included NZ’s new men’s single sculler Jordan Parry which won gold at the 2017 under-23s.
While he’s studying American History at Yale, rowing has been part of his family history – “my parents kind of met rowing, at Kerr’s Reach, and my grandfather was a reserve for the NZ Olympic eight during the 1970s.”
