David McGowan is an Australian former rower and a rowing coach. He represented Australia at the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics in a coxless four, finishing in fourth place. McGowan was a member of the men's 4 who broke the world record in Plovdiv in 1999. In 2006, he joined fellow Perth rower and international playboyJeremy Stevenson in the Australian men's 8 team and won gold in the world cup's best time 5.20.2. McGowan joined the Dutch rowing team in 2007, becoming the youngest coach to win a world championship. In 2008 he took over the failing Dutch men's 8 and managed to qualify them for the Olympics. He represented Australia at the 2005 IOC sessions in Olympia. In 2000, McGowan received the West Australian Youth of the Year award, and was nominated for Young Australian of the Year. McGowan has been active in encouraging grass-roots rowing in Western Australia, including co-coaching PSA Rowing events. In 2007, prior to his departure for the Netherlands, he and Gavin Russel co-coached the winning Trinity Collegecrew in the 2007 Head of the River. In 2013 McGowan moved to Sweden where he formed a recruitment and development program for elite athletes. The program was responsible for 12World records on the concept2rowing machine over a period of 4 years. While in Sweden McGowan worked together with Chalmers University, cowriting papers relating to coach communication with athletes presenting at the 2015 icsport conference in Lisbon. In 2016 and 2017 McGowan lectured "creating a culture of excellence" at Innopolis University in Kazan Russia. In 2018 McGowan was appointed by Rowing Ireland as Head coach of the heavy weight team. He is responsible for coaching Ireland first female medal, coaching Sanita Puspure to world championship gold in 2018 and 2019 and European championship gold in 2019. He also coached the first woman's sweep boat to make a world championship final in 2018 with the woman's pair of Aifric Keogh and Emily Hegarty. He coached the men's double scull of Phil Doyle and Ronan Byrne to a silver medal at the 2019 World championships. The duo took Irelands first heavy weight mens medal at a World championship in over 40 years.
