Naples Gondoliers Row For Italy

By Kelly Garrison
Features Editor

Every year, four gondoliers travel across the world from Long Beach to submerge themselves in a traditional Italian race through the canals of Venice.

This summer, they will paddle again among 1,500 other boats for the 23rd time in the annual Vogalonga regatta. Michael O’Toole, who co-owns the Gondola Getaway company in Naples with David Black, will lead the team in completing its fundraising in the coming months before traveling overseas for the competition.

“It’s a real homegrown international team, so when we compete each year, we represent the United States, since we’re the only American team there,” he said. “We’re also representing California, but what we’re really representing is Long Beach. It’s almost like a city project, so it’s fun when locals get behind it.”

The team has collected about $9,000 so far for its travel expenses with help from its title sponsor, KUD International — a project development company that is relocating from Santa Monica to downtown Long Beach. O’Toole said the team needs to raise $3,000 more and primarily is seeking support from local donors.

Competitors who partake in the 20-mile race on May 11 are mostly from Italy and Europe, O’Toole said. He trained with his first rowing team under the wing of a professional Venetian gondolier in 1985 and has since selected staff from his Long Beach company for teams each year.

“We start off by asking who wants to go,” he said. “It usually works itself out, but sometimes we have to have a row-off.”

Training involves rowing around Naples and Treasure Islands and eventually working up to different parts of the harbor, such as the oil islands. Those efforts, he said, prepare the team to compete with people who have grown up practicing gondola-rowing technique.

But training to race Venetian-style hasn’t always been so predictable for O’Toole, especially with his first experience in the Vogalonga.

“We got there — young, naïve and non-Italian-speaking,” he said. “We totally didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. We couldn’t stand up or steer the boat. The Venetians said, ‘Why did you come here, when you can’t even do it?’”

That was about the time when they were assigned a racing coach who, unbeknownst to them at the time, boasted a big name in Venice boating.

“Our coach was one of the grand champions of all time,” he said. “He showed us the currents, the tides and the wind conditions. We learned from the best of the best — and we knew we were doing it correctly when he stopped yelling at us as much.”

The more than 6,000 racers who row that day use all different types of non-motorized vessels to paddle for three to four hours through the lagoon of Venezia and down the Grand Canal. O’Toole’s team will race in a 27-foot-long “Sandolo” gondola. The race was created in 1974 and is non-competitive, for the most part, said Gondola Getaway General Manager Jeff Cravier, part of this year’s team.

“It’s more of a marathon, and it’s all man-powered boats just like the old times,” he said. “It’s another culture, and you get to know their way of life.”

“The beauty is coming into the finish and going through the working-man section of Venice,” O’Toole added. “They see these guys with blonde hair and an American flag with our oars in perfect cadence, and we get a huge applause because we truly know the technique. We’re the only foreign team that rows Venetian.”

To contribute to O’Toole’s Vogalonga excursion, call 881-0567. For more information about the race, visit www.vogalonga.org.