A chat with Ramon Di Clemente | SA’s rowing Champ

Ramon Di Clemente is known as one of South Africa’s rowing Olympic medallists. Around the globe he has travelled rowing since he was 13 years old, and today, along with 3 other rowing champs, Ramon is a director of a 4 star boutique hotel called The Blades and is also a member of DiBi projects cc, a construction company in Johannesburg.

By: Letlhogonolo Ndhlovu

Ramon Di Clemente at The Blades outside

“We were introduced to Roodeplaat Dam back then in 1989, we were Joburg boys when we came out here with our schools. That’s when we first laid eyes on Roodeplaat Dam,” mentioned Ramon.

Decades later, Ramon and Paul Backes designed and built the niche hotel surrounded by nature untampered, creating an indigenous feel about the hotel at the very dam in Roodeplaat where they first rowed as kids.

We were looking to try and create almost like a clubhouse kind of centre for rowers. The sentiment of the 4 of us is that, as this becomes profitable, a portion of our profits would then go into the clubhouse for club development and potential bursaries,” he said.

Roodeplaat Dam is the only 2000m rowing course in the country and The Blades is the only spot in Pretoria offering rowing classes to individuals or to companies for team building.

Ramon has retired, is married and blessed with 2 girls. He is not completely out of the rowing game what with their rowing clubhouse turned hotel and the part about him sitting on the athletes chair fighting for athlete’s rights.

Ramon with a book of his rowing memories

Passion can lead one very far in the world, so ShowMe picked Ramon’s brain for old memories of him in water pushing boats with oars for competitions.

Tell us about your first international rowing competition?

My first national team was in 1993, I was 18 years old and part of the 1^st junior national team to be able to compete overseas in rowing.

Is rowing a big sport in SA?

It is the smallest sports in SA, but since 1993 which is almost 30 years ago, we have done well developing rowing as a sporting code.

SA has a whole national team of guys and girls training 6hrs a day, doing what they know to compete. We recognize that we are not second class athletes; SA could feed off that by just associating themselves with the rowers.

What have you learnt throughout the years that you impart to younger rowers?

We started off when we were quite insecure, and as a nation maybe we didn’t have the belief that we could beat France or England, so over those years the biggest thing I’ve learnt besides being exposed to the world is confidence and a lot of know how in terms of technique, training methods and being able to use the South African assets which are altitude sea levels.

Does your history in sports help with business?

Don’t know if sports equips you with dealing with business too well sometimes, sports is actually too isolated- too much in a bubble. One thing it did teach was perseverance, I don’t give up as easily.

Read somewhere that senior level rowing is very rare, why?  

The biggest sector is school rowing, there’s a big drop off between school which has structure and money. University rowing is quite big but smaller then club rowing.

Visit The Blades for more insight. Don’t forget to visit our Events & Entertainment page to find out when rowing competitions will take place at Roodeplaat Dam.