PRINCETON, N.J. and CHULA VISTA, Calif. - The selection process for the team that will represent the United States next summer at the 2012 Olympic Games in London officially begins this week.
At locations on both sides of the country, USRowing will hold two fall speed orders beginning Thursday at the USRowing Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., and Saturday at the USRowing Training Center in Princeton, N.J.
In addition to senior team events, a junior speed order will also be held in Princeton on Sunday.
Speed orders have traditionally been held to establish ranking among athletes currently training with the national team and identify potential athletes. For the men's side this year, the event results will help determine who will be invited to the selection camps where the crews that will compete in the eight, four and quadruple sculls will be chosen.
The top four finishers in the men's single and top three men's pairs at the Chula Vista event and the top two men's singles and top two men's pairs in Princeton will earn automatic qualification to the camps.
Thirty-one crews will be in action in Chula Vista, competing in the men's single sculls and men's pair. Among them are some 30 current and past national team athletes including Charlie Cole (New Canaan, Con.), Scott Gault (Piedmont, Calif.), Brett Newlin (Riverton, Wyo.) and Giuseppe Lanzone (Annandale, Va.).
Cole, Gault, Newlin and Lanzone finished fourth in the men's four at the 2011 World Rowing Championships and qualified the boat for London. Joining them on the line are Olympians Jamie Koven (Green Village, N.J.), twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Greenwich, Conn.), David Banks (Washington, D.C.), Giuseppe Lanzone (Annandale, Va.) and three members of the men's eight that won bronze in Beijing including Josh Inman (Hillsboro, Ore.), Steven Coppola (Buffalo, N.Y.), Dan Walsh (Norwalk, Conn.)
The Winklevoss brothers finished sixth in the pair at the Beijing Olympics. Koven, who has rowed on nine national teams, finished fifth in the four at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and was the 1997 world champion in the single.
The Chula Vista event will begin Thursday at 7:30 a.m. with indoor ergometer testing, followed by on-the-water racing on Friday. The results of the erg test will be used to determine the order of racing.
In Princeton, indoor erg testing begins at 1:15 p.m. on Saturday. On-the-water racing will be held Sunday on Carnegie Lake beginning at 8 a.m.
The east coast event features 106 crews rowing the men's and women's single sculls, men's and women's lightweight single sculls, men's and women's pairs and lightweight men's pairs.
Rowing in the women's single will be Gevvie Stone (Newton, Mass.), who represented the United States in the event at the 2011 World Rowing Championships, where she finished 11th. Last month, Stone won her second consecutive title in the single at the Head of the Charles, defeating New Zealand's Emma Twigg.
Also rowing in the event are 11 USRowing Training Center athletes including Natalie Dell (Clearville, Pa.), Megan Kalmoe (St. Croix Falls, Wis.), Stesha Carle (Long Beach, Calif.) and Adrienne Martelli (University Place, Wash.) who won silver in the quadruple sculls in Bled and qualified the boat for London.
Participating in the women's pair are 22 USRowing Training Center athletes. Among them, the women's eight crew that won a sixth consecutive world championship in Bled including Eleanor Logan (Boothbay Harbor, Maine), Caroline Lind (Greensboro, N.C.), Amanda Polk (Pittsburgh, Pa.), Jamie Redman (Spokane, Wash.), Taylor Ritzel (Larkspur, Colo.), Meghan Musnicki (Naples, N.Y.), Susan Francia (Abington, Pa.) and Esther Lofgren (Newport Beach, Calif.).
In the men's pair, eight training center athletes are scheduled to race including 2004 Olympic gold medalist Jason Read (Ringoes, N.J.), Tom Peszek (Farmington Hills, Mich.), who rowed the event in Bled and qualified the boat for 2012, and 2011 Pan American Games double gold medalists Mike Gennaro (Havertown, Pa.) and Ty Otto (Seattle, Wash.). Read, Gennaro and Otto won gold in the eight at the Pan American Games last month.