Rowing through obstacles - The 2022 World Rowing Coach of the Year

Zagreba Viacheslav is no stranger to facing obstacles. He’s the head coach of Ukraine’s para rowing team and despite war in his home country, Viacheslav was the coach behind two gold medals at the 2022 World Rowing Championships.

Viacheslav is World Rowing’s Coach of the Year for 2022 and the first para rowing coach to win this award.

Talking via Zoom from his training base in France, he is dressed in the colours of Ukraine sport and the image Viacheslav sits in front of is one of him in a coaching launch on a beautiful piece of water. He’s wearing dark reflective sunglasses and a wide smile.

Viacheslav is quick to list the people and organisations that have helped him and his team to 2022 success that included gold in the PR1 Men’s Single Sculls (Roman Polianskyi) and the PR2 Mixed Double Sculls (Iaroslav Koiuda and Svitlana Bohaslavska).

“I want to give thanks for the award. It’s not only mine but belongs also to my team, to all the coaches and all organisations that helped give us everything to make it work.

“It was a very challenging year for us and for our country but thanks to armed forces of Ukraine, thanks to the Paralympic Committee of Ukraine, thanks to the World Rowing Federation and our French colleagues from the French Rowing Federation. They made it possible for the team to reach their best.”

Viacheslav readily admits 2022 was difficult year. It was a year that was not so much about the rowing but more about finding ways to make training possible. Training for success turned out not to be the main focus.

His team was at a training camp in Turkey when war broke out in Ukraine.

“Our Turkish colleagues gave us a lot of support. It took us almost a month to find a place to stay and to continue our preparation. In that month our French colleagues offered a place for us to train in France.

“Our team was greeted warmly in France and we were impressed with that so part of us will always stay in France.”

An advocate of para rowing Viacheslav helped qualify all four boat classes for the Tokyo Paralympic Games. Only two other nations managed this feat. He says getting as many people involved as possible is one of the keys to para rowing success.

“Promote para rowing in your country and raise interest in this sport. Involve as many people, especially young people, as possible,” says Viacheslav who is part of a system that uses a talent identification strategy that centres around improving the visibility of the sport.

In Tokyo the Ukrainian team made it to three of the four finals and Polianskyi continued his domination in the PR1 men’s single sculls by winning gold.

Now Viacheslav is already looking towards the next Paralympic Games.

“We did a detailed analysis of the performance of our team at the World Champs,” says Viacheslav. “We are really impressed that the competition grows every year. But we think thanks to good preparation we will be able to get ready for the next world championships. We’re hoping to take the maximum number of spots for the Paralympics next year (at the 2023 qualification) and, of course, our goal for the next two years is to show good results for the Paralympics in Paris.”

The World Rowing Coach of the Year award has been going since 1998. This year the nominees were Zagreba Viacheslav, Christian Felkel, Great Britain, Michelle Darvill, Netherlands, Antonio Colamonici Romania.