Jack Nunn Featured In The Long Beach Grunion Gazette
Nunn Of That Negative Stuff For Rowing’s Olympian’s Son
Feb. 24 is the Academy Awards. I think about the children of famous people and major award winners around this time. How is it as the offspring of an Academy Award winner? What about an Olympic medal winner? Read More Here
Jack Nunn is the son of John Nunn, who won the bronze Olympic medal in 1968 with his partner Bill Maher in the double sculls rowing event. I sat down with Jack this week to ask him if he felt like he grew up in his dad’s shadow. Jack started rowing in1996 for Long Beach Juniors and made the 1997 Junior National Team Selection Camp. He went on to star for four years at UC Berkeley with a full scholarship, winning four Pac-10 championships and three IRA Division I National Championships. He has clearly always been an elite athlete, on the top of his sport. At one point, his dad told him, “You’ve done enough.” But it ate at Jack that he wasn’t the Olympic star his dad was. ”It’s still with me, I’ve had to let it go,” he said. “I have no regrets, I’ve made peace with it.” Jack’s family have always been supportive, dad always volunteered to coach all sports – Baseball, soccer, ice hockey, in school. His parents were always there cheering him on. In 2008, Jack started doing triathlons, and training for them. The family’s unconditional support was lacking
initially. They were concerned about injuries. “Pick one thing,” his dad had taught him, But Jack had a passion to run, cycle, and row – he had been dreaming about getting paid for what he loved to do. There were concerns that maybe Jack wasn’t a strong enough swimmer for high level competition. In junior high he was won a water polo team whose policy was no cuts to the roster. Jack was cut. Jack upped his game from triathlons to grueling Ironman competitions. When he returned from his first Ironman in Nice, France, he felt good about how he did. He performed outstanding in the swimming portion, very well in the cycling portion, and good in the running. Bronze medal-winning dad John Nunn said, “We need to talk,” and ushered his grown son into the privacy of his home office. Jack had never seen his father so serious. He started thinking about his time in France and what dad might have heard. Did I party too much? Spend too much money? The room grew silent. John looked straight into Jack’s eyes and asked. “Are you taking steroids?” Of course Jack wasn’t. John Nunn was concerned that with such a great time on the swimming portion, his son must be have been something to unfairly enhance his performance. On that day, Jack felt he was no longer in his father’s shadow, he was on a equal level. His family is proud that he has competed in more than 100 triathlons, including 16 full Ironman’s, he said. Jack Nunn is currently training for the Ultraman Extreme endurance race February 15-17 in Orlando, Florida, and he said he is doing this race to honor his father’s Bronze medal win 50 years ago. Ultraman Florida is a three-day athletic endeavor guaranteed to test an athlete’s physical and mental limits. The race covers a total distance of 322 miles, around central Florida and it is more than double an Ironman competition; it requires that each participant complete a 6.2 mile swim plus a 92 mile bike the first day, a 171-mile bike ride the second, and a 52-mile run on the final day. Ten years ago, Jack created a one-a-kind fitness studio called Roworx Fitness http://www.roworx.com, that specializes in endurance training on indoor rowing machines. Jack incorporates nearly 80% of all his fitness training using this method and teaches others the technique. Nunn’s classes are for all ages and fitness levels and are taught at the Long Beach Rowing Center on Marine Stadium. His students say they enjoy his unique motivational story style served with physically challenging workouts – all delivered with his no regrets philosophy.
Tags: Jack Nunn, John Nunn, Rowing Class, Roworx, Triathlon coach