It’s not that Alex Martel is adverse in any way to team sports.

Quite enjoys them, truth be told.

By the same token, the 23 year-old graduate of Collège Notre-Dame who is entering the final year of his pursuit of a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Laurentian University this fall is also more than willing to go it alone.

That’s kind of the nature of para rowing – even more so when the Sudbury Rowing Club is your home port. Martel left last week to participate in the rowing gala that is the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in St Catharines and, to the best of our knowledge, appears to be the only member of the local club making the trip this year.

By its very nature, the world of para rowing can be quite solitary – to the point of Martel having experienced far more races with able-bodied competitors who are of similar speed than races he has enjoyed with other rowers who might be dealing with the daily challenges of cerebral palsy.

Making his sixth or seventh trip to the Henley this month, Martel has established an athletic comfort zone that only came to be during his years of secondary schooling, a big fan of basketball prior to that.

“In the winter of grade nine, I did my first indoor rowing competition (on an ergometer) and I got a bronze medal,” said Martel, initially approached by former Laurentian University rowing coach Amanda Schweinbenz. “As a member of a team, we had won some medals – but nothing ever individually.”

“That really boosted my confidence. I figured I might actually be good at this – so I kept at it and kept at it, through high-school and university.”

Most interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Martel required very little in the way of any kind of equipment / boat adaptation as he looked to master a stroke that he described as a “very, very simple motion – but to get it perfect, it’s a continuous work in progress.”

In his particular case, a talented rower with cerebral palsy, the para component is inherent to his physical composition. “My right leg doesn’t produce as much power as my left leg, so in the water, you tend to turn into a spin,” said Martel. “You have to over-correct. Ideally, 70% of your power or ability to gain speed (in rowing) is through the legs.”

“If not, you tend to overuse your back, which is never a good thing. Honestly, your arms just tend to follow everything that your legs are doing.”

All in all, it would make for a relatively seamless move to rowing from basketball as Martel recognized both his innate potential for the sport, but also his love of being out on the water, in control of his vessel. “I started off with pontoons, at first, just to get a little more comfortable with the boat; I had some balance issues,” he said.

“But once I felt comfortable in the boat, we went to wider boats, para boats with a sliding seat and then just a regular boat. There was a gradual progression there.”

That slope of that progression was most noticeable pre-Covid. As the academic demands of the university engineering program grew, Martel was faced with that difficult decision to sacrifice some time on the water for more time with the studies. It’s clear, as he describes his current mindset, that elements of both remain very much in play.

“Right now, it’s mainly just for fun, but competitive fun.”

Part of the beauty of rowing lies in the lifelong ability for many to partake in the early morning serenity that so often accompanies the pastime. Therein lies an appeal for Alex Martel, even if he is not yet at the point of completely abandoning his wildest of competitive dreams.

“I don’t want to close the door,” he said. “I would like to make it to the Row Ontario (para) team and see how things go from there. I really enjoy the sport and would love to continue this until I am in my sixties or seventies.”

The Henley is one of the very few settings where Martel is actually racing in a para rowing setting. So limited are the numbers, in general, that the university ranks would allow him to race even while he was still a high-school student at CND. He certainly doesn’t mind a mixed all-inclusive race against rowers of similar speed – but there is something special when he convenes with other athletes who must overcome similar hurdles.

To this day, one of his favourite race experiences came at the Brock Invite in a category dubbed the “double inclusion races”, two-person crafts that featured one para rower teamed with an able-bodied partner. “We raced three times,” Martel recalled. “They were all close, really, really tight races.”

“My opponent was a giant, like 6’7”,” Martel continued. “It was a battle of speed versus strength. That was fun.”

That thrill of competition simply proves that Alex Martel is very much like the bulk of those entrants who tackled the Henley this month, even as he travels a journey all his own.