drew a mixed reception when it was proposed as an Olympic venue a year ago<\/a>, mainly because of its currents.<\/p>\nFormer Olympic rowing champion Drew Ginn said some athletes might be disadvantaged by their lane placement on the river, and a council in northern Brisbane has proposed its own venue in Moreton Bay.<\/p>\n
However, Queensland state Olympic minister Tim Mander said organisers were not looking elsewhere.<\/p>\n
“We are committed to it, we’re not looking at alternatives. The rowing will be at Rockhampton,” he told reporters in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
“There’s no reason to be looking at alternatives when you have the level of confidence that we have.”<\/p>\n
About 500 rowers signed an open letter last month demanding a rethink of the Fitzroy River proposal.<\/p>\n
The river passed initial testing by the Games Independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority last October.<\/p>\n
An expert from World Rowing, the international rowing federation, is expected to assess the venue in coming weeks and decide whether to endorse it for the Games by mid-year.<\/p>\n
World Rowing noted potential issues in a statement last year but said it would work with stakeholders to ensure athlete safety and integrity of the competition.<\/p>\n
Mander said there was nothing unusual about World Rowing’s coming assessment.<\/p>\n
“There’s not one thing that they’ve said that would give us concern with regard to going forward,” he said.<\/p>\n
-Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 5.2-metre male crocodile found in a creek along the Fitzroy River near Rockhampton. Photo: STR \/ AFP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-383324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/4JQ1MA0_AFP__20170922__SN6NE__v1__HighRes__AustraliaAnimalCrocodile_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n