By Alex Crowe and Bridie Smith
The high-stakes, high-intensity world of schoolboy rowing can open university doors and launch professional careers. But the death of a year 12 Melbourne Grammar student rower this week has raised questions about the intensity of training regimes schools set for teens in the hope their crews finish first.
Edward Millear, 17, died after collapsing while training on a stationary rower at Melbourne Grammar’s boat shed by the Yarra on Tuesday afternoon.
Rowing can open doors for Melbourne Grammar students to study and row at prestigious universities, including Harvard in the US.Credit: Getty Images
Like his crewmates and hundreds of other students from the 11 private schools participating in the Associated Public Schools’ rowing competitions, an almost elite level of fitness is required to make it onto the water on race days.
Senior students at some of Melbourne’s highest-fee paying schools can be required to train up to six mornings and five afternoons a week, in addition to weekend competitions.
Edward Millear wearing an Australian Henley Regatta hoodie at a rowing event.
In Melbourne Grammar documents from 2020, seen by this masthead, parents were advised their year 8 students would be required to undertake nine hours of after-school training in term 4.
Each week, the school ran two optional cross-training sessions to “begin preparing their fitness for rowing and other senior school sports”.
That year, the top 60 boys were selected after coaches took their measurements, including height and arm span, and assessed their performance in the gym on the stationary rower and bike.
Those who were selected were required to attend a four-day rowing camp in the school holidays focused on “fitness, racing and pushing the boys new-found rowing skills beyond imagination”.
Those who didn’t make the squad were invited to join a development team and attend a camp “with the intent to challenge the boys in the top 60”.
If students don’t catch the eye of scouts at regattas, their performance may attract the attention of US Ivy League universities.
School consultant Paul O’Shannassy said some parents specifically looked for schools with a prestigious track record in rowing.
“Some parents see it as a career path and that’s why they seek school rowing programs out,” he said.
“A lot of them see it as a pathway to US universities.”
O’Shannassy said this was more often the case for parents of boys than girls and that parents also sought out schools with highly regarded AFL and swimming programs.
The handouts given to Melbourne Grammar parents in 2020 point out the doors rowing can open for boys.
Melbourne Grammar School student Edward Millear died after collapsing during rowing training.
“It has represented a pathway to representing Australia at world championships, international rowing regattas and the Olympics or selection into an overseas university scholarship with several OM boys achieving rowing placements at colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Cal Berkeley and Princeton in recent years.”
The intensity of APS rowing training programs has drawn criticism from parents, including two who spoke to this masthead on condition of anonymity.
One former Melbourne Grammar School dad said he pulled his son out of the rowing program after his concerns raised with the school were ignored.
“These kids are training at insane levels compared to any other school sports,” he said.
“They’re waking up at crazy hours in the morning and doing huge sessions, and then they do their sessions after school as well.”
The father said the boys especially were pitted against each other during timed exercises on the stationary equipment.
“It’s almost tribal. You have a group of 20 boys surrounding one kid as he does his ergo time,” he said.
“Rowing is such that it’s still set in the 1900s, where they pick and choose their favourites and there’s nepotism that goes on.
“When you run, every kid in the world runs, when you swim, almost every kid in the world swims but when you row, you’re already in the upper echelons of society.”
Melbourne Grammar School declined to respond to what it said were “outdated and inaccurate claims made about the school’s rowing program five years ago”.
Headmaster Philip Grutzner, who is also the APS chair, has said his priority following the death of the 17-year-old student was to care and support his students, staff – particularly those who provided first aid – and the wider school community.
Grutzner rushed to the boat shed after Millear’s collapse and visited the family at The Alfred hospital and at home.
A tribute left at the Melbourne Grammar boat shed for Millear.Credit: Nine News
St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne and St Vincent’s Institute cardiologist Professor André La Gerche said he held concerns over the high expectations surrounding private schools’ sports programs, including rowing.
“There’s a few of us, including myself, who see a lot of these people and think that sometimes these kids are pushed too hard, too early,” he said.
However, La Gerche said it was impossible to take a healthy person and train them to a point where they died suddenly. Rather, exercise could trigger an underlying problem.
La Gerche, who specialises in cardiac imaging, sports cardiology and cardiac arrest, stressed to parents that children were not at risk of dying when training or competing.
“The consequences are not cardiac arrest. The consequences are burnout, injuries, fatigue and, in some kids, psychological distress of not making the firsts.”
“Rowing, particularly these private school rowing programs, comes with a lot of prowess and social mobility.”
He said coaches were also pressured to get the best out of students, some who may not have rowed before, in very short timeframes – sometimes within two years.
“If you’re running any other elite sporting program, that would be the wrong timeframe.”
He said red flag symptoms parents, students, coaches and schools should be alert to were chest pain, palpitation, light-headedness or passing out, particularly during exercise, and an unusual shortness of breath.
La Gerche said doing a two-kilometre row on an ergo machine would likely push a teenager’s heart rate to 90 per cent of their maximum heart rate – typically 180 to 190 beats per minute – but that this was within the bounds of a healthy sport training program.
A team of medics from The Alfred rushed to the boat shed and took over from Melbourne Grammar staff. Within 45 minutes, Millear was on an extracorporeal membrane oxygen machine, which takes over from the heart and lungs to maintain circulation during a cardiac arrest.
“He received the best care he could have received anywhere in the world,” La Gerche said, adding that the likelihood of surviving a cardiac arrest was just 10 per cent.
“I wouldn’t go into the details of this particular case, but in the majority, 55 per cent of cases, we do believe it is due to the heart.”
Melbourne Grammar student Edward Millear.
One former APS school coach, who spoke to this masthead on the condition of anonymity, said the pressure to perform involved a range of factors.
“Sometimes it’s coach-driven. Sometimes it’s the culture of the school. Sometimes it’s the students’ desires and goals and their own personal challenges. And even sometimes, dare I say, it’s the influence of the parents as well.”
The coach said that at the APS school she’d worked at, students who made “the firsts” for any sports team wore distinct blazers that distinguished them from the wider student cohort.
“Sport is such a big part of their school that half days are dedicated to sport training, these kids are playing football and doing rowing at the same time, or they’re doing cricket and rowing at the same time,” she said.
”If you get into the first for football, for cricket, for rowing, you get the privilege of wearing the special striped blazer.
“I can’t speak for the culture of every club or for every school because it would vary, and it definitely changes with what the sports culture is and who the director of rowing is, and who the coaches are, and all those kinds of things … but the boys think very highly of themselves in the rowing communities. I think it’s just an ego thing, and as a female who has seen it, I’m just not interested in being involved in it.
“There’s always room for growth … especially when it comes to the wellbeing of students.”
In a tribute, Rowing Victoria praised Millear’s passion for rowing. “Our thoughts are with Ed’s family, his friends, teachers and coaches, who will all be trying to process the magnitude of this profound loss,” Rowing Victoria president Deborah Spring said.
The organisation called on all its clubs and members to look after each other’s wellbeing after Millear’s death.
At the 111th running of the Australian Henley Regatta, which takes place on the Yarra on Saturday, Melbourne Grammar rowers from year 10 to 12 will wear black armbands in a tribute to Millear. The regatta will pause for a minute’s silence and Millear’s second VIII crew will row but not compete.
Instead, Millear’s crewmates will do a ‘row past’ – with Millear’s seat left vacant.
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