Stephen Mark Hawkins OAM (born 14 January 1971) is an Australian former national champion, World Champion and Olympic gold medal winning lightweight rower.

Club and state rowing

Hawkins' senior rowing was from the Lindisfarne Rowing Club near Hobart. He commenced contesting the national lightweight single sculls title at the

Australian Rowing Championships Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Aus ...

in 1990, coached by his father Stephen Hawkins Snr. In 1991 he beat out his Tasmanian rival Simon Burgess and claimed his first national lightweight championship in the single sculls. He won that same title at

in 1993 and 1994. In 1992 he placed second behind

Peter Antonie Peter Thomas Antonie OAM (born 11 May 1958) is an Australian former rower. He is an Olympic & Commonwealth games gold medallist and world champion. He is regarded as one of Australia's greatest ever rowers figuring in senior representative squ ...

in the heavyweight single sculls Australian championship. From 1989 to 1994 he was the Tasmanian state representative picked to race the President's Cup – the open heavyweight single scull – at the Interstate Regatta within the

. He won the interstate championship for Tasmania in 1993.

International representative rowing

Hawkins first competed at a FISA event at the

1990 World Rowing Championships Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 ''Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since the ...

in his home state of Tasmania – in a lightweight

quad scull A quadruple sculling boat, often simply called a quad and abbreviated 4x, is a rowing boat used in the sport of competitive rowing. It is designed for four people who propel the boat by sculling with two oars, or "sculls", one in each hand. Rac ...

with

Burgess __NOTOC__ Burgess may refer to: People and fictional characters * Burgess (surname), a list of people and fictional characters * Burgess (given name), a list of people Places * Burgess, Michigan, an unincorporated community * Burgess, Missouri, U ...

, Gary Lynagh and Bruce Hick. They won the bronze medal. The following year at Vienna 1991 that same crew won gold and a World Championship title. They rowed through the field and won by 0.23 seconds. In 1992 Hawkins was selected in the Olympic heavyweight double scull with

to compete at

Barcelona 1992 The 1992 Summer Olympics ( es, Juegos Olímpicos de Verano de 1992, ca, Jocs Olímpics d'estiu de 1992), officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad ( es, Juegos de la XXV Olimpiada, ca, Jocs de la XXV Olimpíada) and commonly known as ...

. Antonie, a veteran of 15 years of international competition was, like Hawkins a lightweight and they were respectively Australia's #1 & #2 ranked scullers ahead of the heavyweights Richard Powell and Jason Day. The selectors felt that Antonie would be unlikely to win the single scull event but using a weight corrected ergo score methodology determined that Antonie and Hawkins together could be competitive in the double. They prepared perfectly, raced superbly and won the Olympic gold. For Roudnice 1993 and Indianapolis 1994 Hawkins was selected as Australia's lightweight single sculler. He rowed to second place and a silver medal in 1993 behind Great Britain's Peter Haining. In 1994 he finished in twelfth place. Hawkins was inducted into the Tasmanian Sporting Hall of Fame in 2003.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hawkins, Stephen 1971 births Living people Australian male rowers Rowers at the 1992 Summer Olympics Olympic rowers of Australia Olympic gold medalists for Australia Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia Olympic medalists in rowing Medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics World Rowing Championships medalists for Australia 20th-century Australian people