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South Delta rowers win gold at Pan Am Games

Brendan Hodge and Maxwell Lattimer help Canada beat favoured Americans in lightweight four event
rowing
Tsawwassen's Brendan Hodge (left) and Ladner's Maxwell Lattimer were members of Canada's gold medal winning lightweight men's four crew.

Brendan Hodge and Maxwell Lattimer have struck gold at the Pan Am Games.

The South Delta rowers helped Canada capture the lightweight men’s four event on the final day of competition at the Pan American regatta, held on the Royal Canadian Henley course in St. Catherine’s, Ontario.

The Canadian crew entered the race as the underdogs and had to overcome being assigned lane one. 

When the gun went off, the Canadians went into attack mode and pulled away from the field. They finished the 2000 meter course ahead of silver medalist United States, while Chile earned bronze.

“There was a pretty stiff headwind coming down the course creating some unsettling water in the start,” Lattimer told the Optimist. “We stuck to our game plan of getting out clean and rowing with lots of length and power.

“We stayed very internal sticking to our race plan in a very tight dual with the United States down the course but coming into the last 500 metres when we could hear the roar of the crowd I knew that no matter how much pain we were in we could up the pace in our sprint to the line. 

“This was definitely our best international race to date and it gives us a tonne of confidence as we head back into training for the world championships.”

Hodge and Lattimer were  joined in the shell by Ontario's Nicolas Pratt and and Eric Woelfl The team is coached by Al Morrow and based out of Rowing Canada's High Performance Centre in London, Ontario.

Lattimer is one of the country's top up-and-coming rowers who was identified by 2008 Olympic gold medalist Ben Rutledge during a Team B.C. identification camp in his Grade 11 year at Vancouver College.

He spent one year at the University of Western Ontario before returning home to row under Mike Pierce at UBC. The Ladner native then earned a spot on the national team and put his biology studies at UBC on hold to train full-time as a carded athlete out of London. The long-term plan is to compete with his younger brother Aaron at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He has an excellent chance of getting to Rio for the 2016 Games first.

Hodge, 30, resumed his international rowing career after being focused on his university studies for several years, attending Harvard, then law school at UBC. It was watching the 2012 Summer Olympics that inspired him to return to the water.

The Tsawwassen native received the blessing of his employer - Vancouver law firm Lawson Lundell - and moved across the country to train two years ago.

Lattimer admits going for gold at the Pan Ams on Canadian waters was an added incentive.

“Competing in a international field in front of Canadian fans is a once in a lifetime kind of event. “I think I can speak for all of the teammates in my boat when I say that the atmosphere around the event provided us with extra motivation.”

The 2015 World Rowing Championships will be held in France, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 6. The Canadian lightweight crew will be looking to improve on its 13th place finish a year ago.