Michael Rush (rower)

Michael Rush

Michael Rush ca. 1874
Personal information
Nationality	Irish Australian
Born	3 January 1844 Dooish Townland, Co. Tyrone, Ireland
Died	17 December 1922(1922-12-17) (aged 78) Hurstville, New South Wales Australia
Sport
Sport	Rowing (sculling)
Retired	ca. 1888

Michael Rush (3 January 1844 – 17 December 1922) was an Irish Australian sculler noted for his one-on-one competitions against champion opponents, which drew vast crowds of spectators. He attempted to win the World Sculling Championship.

Rush arrived in Sydney in 1861 at the age of 16, an assisted immigrant brought to augment Australia's mostly agricultural workforce. Rush was a farm labourer, who knew nothing of boats or boating, but within ten years of his arrival in Australia, Rush was Champion Sculler of the Clarence River, as well as a selector, cattle-raiser and butcher. His interest in the sport of rowing dominated Rush's life, and hampered his prosperity. He repeatedly travelled from his Clarence River home to compete for large money prizes on Sydney's Parramatta River, neglecting his business affairs. Rush became Champion Sculler of Australia in 1873, and defended his championship several times, not always successfully. Rush succeeded on a few occasions in having the Championship venue moved from Sydney to the Clarence River, the first to shift the focus of sculling away from the capital city. From 1874, there was talk of Rush travelling to England to compete for the World Sculling Championship, but this did not eventuate. Instead, Edward Trickett won the World Championship on the Thames in 1876. Rush and Trickett in 1877 competed on the Parramatta River for the World Championship, but Rush lost this race.

Rush was unique in early Australian sculling in that he provided opportunities for others to compete and excel, by organising regattas and other rowing events, though financially he gained little. He raised and raced horses, organised athletic carnivals, and was a generous supporter of charities, churches, and schools. His background as the son of Irish tenant farmers, a class traditionally debarred by law from owning land and hence accumulating wealth, gave Rush little understanding of the management of money. Rush and his wife had fourteen children, and the Rush family lived in grand, if not extravagant style; most Rush enterprises were financed by mortgages or promissory notes. When the Banks Crash of 1893 came, Rush was not only deeply in debt, he did not even own the house he lived in.