Kate's Story
1971 -
Kate Slatter’s record stamps her as the most successful Australian woman rower ever. She won a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, silver four years later at the Sydney Games and gold at the world championships in 1995. To that tally can be added two world championship bronze medals in 1994 and 1999. Slatter, like her gold-medal partner in the coxless pairs, Megan Still, began her rowing career in 1991 as a scholarship holder at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. Slatter and Still, both outstanding athletes during their schooldays, were chosen by the AIS as members of a senior sweep squad. They became partners in training, and remained together all the way to their Olympic gold medal.
By the end of their first year at the AIS, they were rowing at the highest level. They were selected in the women’s four and eight that contested the world championships in Vienna. The following year, 1992, they went to the Barcelona Olympics in the women’s four --- and finished sixth. In 1995 they raced together internationally for the first time, and won gold at the world titles in Finland. After their victory in at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Still retired. Slatter tried other partners, and finally teamed successfully with Racheal Taylor --- winning bronze at the 1999 world titles in Canada. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics they won the silver medal. Slatter, a compulsively high achiever who added an MBA from Bond University to earlier degrees in commerce and science, retired after those Games. She attended the 2008 Olympics in Beijing as an athlete liaison officer with the Australian team.
Harry Gordon, AOC Historian
