Scott Frandsen came to Oxford in 2003 to study for an MSc in Psychology at St Edmund Hall. He rowed for Oxford in the 2003 Boat Race, when the team won by one foot! He competed in the rowing men’s pair for Canada at Beijing 2008 and won the silver medal.
Dave Calder and I established ourselves as the top rowing men’s pair in Canada during spring 2011 and decided to seek qualification for London 2012 as a pair.
We train three times a day, six days a week. It is a full time job but I love the athlete lifestyle. We train as a group through the winter and then split into the different boats throughout the spring.
The challenge for Dave and me is to maintain our position on the team in order to secure our spots in the pair again, and to get faster so that we can aim for a medal next summer.
Qualifying for London 2012 at the World Championships in August 2011 was a huge achievement. In 2008, the year of the Beijing Games, Dave and I had to qualify just a month or so before the Olympics. This time, having qualified a year in advance, we can just focus everything on being as fast as we can for the Olympics.
My time at Oxford was way too brief. I packed a lot into those 12 months and made some amazing friends; friendships that are as strong today as they were eight years ago. Our training for the Boat Race propelled me onto the Canadian team and was key to me being able to break into the Men’s Eight for the Athens Olympics.
It will be great to race in front of all of my friends from Oxford at London 2012. Eton had just begun to dig Dorney Lake, the venue for rowing in the London Olympics, during my time at Oxford and now I spend a lot of time going there. It will be somewhat surreal to race an Olympic Games on the same water.
I would say to current students that they should take advantage of all of the different sport programs that are available to them. It is difficult to find such a large group of intelligent and motivated athletes that you can connect with and relate to. Embrace it and feed off of it. Don't let it pass you by because you are too busy with other things.
