Empacher

The embodiment of my own dream

I already stopped for years with competition rowing. But when I see a brand new model of an Empacher in the boathouse, I can never resist the urge to briefly touch the boat. When I started rowing, all top class rowers used to row in these beautiful bright yellow boats. As I progressed in my rowing career, these bright shells soon started to be the embodiment of my own Olympic dream. The first time that my rowing crew was finally allowed to glide through the water in a real yellow Empacher, we felt like we were training for the Olympic final. Of course we couldn’t care less that these boats are actually quite difficult to row in and it probably looked awful what we were doing! After all, we were rowing in an Empacher, and nobody could take that away from us. Like Ferrari red automatically draws your attention, the sight of Empacher yellow will always make my heart stop for a short while.

Vincev, Netherlands - 16 July 2007