HEAD OF THE CHARLES '07: Off Thin Ice

It had to be crew.

A former Canadian hockey star and standout all-around athlete, senior Anton Wintner competed in rugby, track, football, basketball, lacrosse, and hockey before he even got to college. But when Wintner arrived at Harvard, it was time to pick up an oar.

“Rowing was one sport I had never done,” Wintner said. “I came to Harvard, and the only sports you could just pick up and walk on to were basically track and rowing. I decided that I had a little bit better of a physique for rowing than for running.”

As the Harvard crew program lands many of the most coveted recruits in the world, Wintner definitely had his work cut out for him as a walk-on in his freshman season. But Wintner, as he once was on the ice in his native Canada, was up to the challenge on the Charles.

“Playing hockey, I always prided myself on being very hard-working, and that’s definitely something that comes in very handy in rowing,” Wintner said. “Being a successful rower consists of mastering one motion by doing it thousands of times a day, trying to perfect it, and the other part of it is trying to improve your fitness. What in other sports is constituted as punishment—in rowing, it’s practice.”

After 12 years playing competitive hockey in Canada, the world’s ice hockey mecca, it’s no surprise Wintner is a master of discipline. Wintner got his start on the ice when he was just eight years old, competing both as a forward and a defenseman on Canadian youth teams. But by the time he was 10, Wintner took over as goalie and didn’t leave the crease for the next 10 years of his career. Wintner’s move to netminder proved the right one: he earned a position on Canada’s junior national hockey team, where he played for two years.

In a country where hockey is the most popular sport, Wintner had the opportunity to play in front of large, noisy and enthusiastic crowds. He played for a community-owned team in a small town in northern Saskatchewan, where, Wintner said, “everyone showed up to the games. It was pretty incredible to be 18, 19 years old and playing in front of a few thousand people regularly.”

After Wintner’s years with Canada’s junior hockey team and even a brief stint with Slovakia’s Under-18 hockey team (Wintner was born in Slovakia and retains Slovakian citizenship), a recurring hip injury finally forced him to give up on competitive hockey for good. But though Wintner had to forego his hockey career, this jack of all trades refused to say goodbye to sports.

“Playing all the different sports helped develop my athletic abilities a little bit,” Wintner said. “That’s kind of why I wasn’t ready to stop cold turkey and give it up when I got to college.”

And Wintner, used to the highest level of competition in his country’s trademark sport, found similar competition and excellence in Newell Boathouse with the Harvard heavyweights. The Crimson heavyweights annually welcome in some of the world’s best junior rowers, making Wintner’s trek up the varsity ladder as a walk-on all the more difficult.

But Wintner found immediate success, rowing in the first freshman eight during his rookie season and earning a spot in the varsity boat his sophomore year. At the beginning of the 2006 spring season, Wintner was the only sophomore seated in the varsity eight—a feat for any first-year member of the Harvard varsity, but one especially remarkable given that he had picked up an oar for the first time just a season earlier.

“Within a year, he was able to give all the guys who had been rowing for four or five years a good run for their money,” senior Breffny Morgan said. “He established himself in the team very quickly.”

Unfortunately, Wintner suffered another injury­­—this time a fractured rib, a common rowing injury—shortly after the varsity lineups were released. The injured rib kept him off the water for several weeks and came at the worst possible time, mere days before the Crimson was to take to the starting line in a season-opening race at Brown.

“This was a couple days before our first race of the season, so I was in the varsity for a total of about three days,” Wintner said.

After long and lonely weeks rehabilitating the injury, Wintner bounced back, returning to the boathouse just in time for Eastern Sprints. Rowing in the second varsity eight, Wintner helped in the boat’s gold-medal performace at Eastern Sprints and in a national title win with a first-place finish at IRAs. He kept on with the second varsity in the crew’s Henley run in 2006.

“It was sort of a sad thing to not be able to row in the varsity, but at the same time, it was a pretty good season for the JV,” Wintner said. “And hey, we got a free trip to England out of it.”

As a junior, Wintner returned for his second season on the varsity and rowed all year with the second varsity eight.

Now in his final season with the Harvard heavyweights, Wintner enters Newell Boathouse as the varsity’s Master Protocol, the squad’s rule enforcer and a senior leader for the Crimson varsity.

Wintner has high hopes for the coming season—and with good reason, as Harvard capped off its 2007 campaign with a win at Henley and returns 13 oarsmen from its top two boats last season.

Setting an example for the younger rowers as well as fellow walk-ons, Wintner’s leadership in the boathouse does not go unnoticed.

“[The freshmen walk-ons] wonder how can I measure up, how can I compete against them,” Morgan said. “But when a guy like Anton comes along and shows them it can be done, it gives them a lot of courage, and it keeps them coming out. It’s nice to see that sort of example in the boathouse right now.”

And it’s comforting to know that all Wintner’s hard work just might inspire a few more walk-ons before he has to walk off.

—Staff writer Courtney D. Skinner can be reached at cskinner@fas.harvard.edu.