CHULA VISTA, Calif. - The quest to be an Olympic athlete is a long and difficult process. The crews that lined up this morning on Lower Otay Reservoir for the finals of three 2012 USRowing selection events were all aware of what was at stake.
Gevvie Stone, (Newton, Mass.) was one of them. After finishing 11th at the 2011 World Championships in the women's single sculls, her mind has been on this date from the moment she climbed out of her boat on Lake Bled, Slovenia.
"It was tough," Stone said. "I really thought that I could come in top nine (at the world championships), and that was my goal. But I didn't pull it off. So I came home motivated, but slightly discouraged."
All that is behind her now. Stone won her race and the right to go to the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland in May. Stone was one of six crews who won this morning in three different events that included the including National Selection Regatta II, Non-Qualified Small Boat Olympic Trials and 2012 Paralympic Trials - Rowing.
Besides the women's single, racing was contested in the men's and women's double and the lightweight men's double in the non-qualified boat events, and the lightweight women's double and the men's adaptive single in the events that were qualified in Bled last summer.
After Ron Harvey (Downingtown, Pa.) rowed uncontested to earn the right to represent the United States in the 2012 Paralympics in London, a boat he had qualified in Bled, Stone went to the line to face the four finalists of the three day regatta, among them Lindsay Meyer (Seattle, Wash.), who had rowed from behind to defeat Stone in the semifinal Wednesday.
This was the third time in three years the two have raced each other for a chance to make the U.S. national team, with Meyer, a Beijing Olympian, winning in 2010, and Stone last spring.
After a day of rain and light winds, the Southern California morning dawned with bright blue skies and slight tail wind blowing up the 2,000-meter course. Coming out of the start, both Stone and Meyer fell behind California Rowing Club's Isolda Penney (Kingston, Ontario) who led the field through nearly the entire first half of the race with Stone maintaining contact and rowing a steady pace on the outside lane and Meyer chasing in lane four.
Just before the second half, Stone inched past Penney and upped her rate for a third quarter drive. Her plan working, Stone moved away from both Penney and Meyer, who had moved into second place. Coming into the final 500 meters, Stone was unrelenting and crossed the line in 7:32.729 with Meyer finishing second in 7:36.171. Penney crossed third with a time of 7:47.784.
"It was a fun race, a tough race," Stone said. "Lindsay and Isolda both came out fast and came out fighting. The conditions were perfect. There was a light tail wind so all of our times were fast and respectable. I just did what I wanted to do.
"This has been on my mind since Bled, I was thinking what's the next step," she said. "Going to London has been my goal all along and this is one of the steps in getting there."
Following the women's single was the men's double sculls and it was no less intense. Coming off the line the Penn Athletic Club and Potomac Boat Club composite entry of Willie Cowles (Farmington, Conn.) and Stephen Whelpley (Moquon, Wis.) set the tone and jumped ahead, with the USRowing Training Center-Chula Vista entry of Warren Anderson (Paso Robles, Calif.) and Sam Stitt (McLean, Va.) going after them.
All four crews stayed in a tight pack through to the 1,000-meter mark until Anderson and Stitt poured on the heat and started inching ahead. Coming to the finish, the Chula Vista boat drove ever harder and made sure that they earned the right to go to Lucerne, winning in a time of 6:16.695, followed by Cowles and Whelpley in 6:21.975. Finishing third was the Craftsbury Sculling Center crew of brothers Peter Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) and Thomas Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) in 6:23.527.
"It was a solid race," said Stitt. "We stayed with the race plan and Warren executed perfectly. He didn't have to say a lot. It's just another day in the office with that guy. I think we were really well prepared. Everyone had their A game and stepped it up. It's always a little dicey on race day," he said.
"Somebody one day could be right up there with you and some days, they could be back and Willie Cowles and Steve Whelpley just brought it off the start and they were right with us through the thousand." Next up were the women's double sculls and the two entries from the USRowing Training Center-Princeton - Ellen Tomek (Flint, Mich.) and Megan Kalmoe (St, Croix Falls, Wis.) and Stesha Carle (Long Beach, Calif.) and Kate Bertko (Oakland, Calif.) - fought for the lead all the way through the course.
Carle and Bertko took the lead, but Tomek and Kalmoe never let go and made a push in the final strokes to catch their teammates. It wasn't enough, however, and Carle and Bertko crossed first in a time of 7:00.958, with Tomek and Kalmoe behind them in 7:02.424. Finishing third in 7:09.958 was Potomac Boat Club's Margot Shumway (Westlake, Ohio) and Sarah Trowbridge (Guilford, Conn.).
"It was good," said Carle. "It was a nice solid piece. Everyone kind of came out with their A game and we came out with a win. We were really focused on our race plan, staying focused and pushing our bow out ahead."
Because both the first and second place finishers declined to race in the qualifying regatta, the opportunity rolled down to Shumway and Trowbridge, who have accepted.
In the final Non-Qualified Olympic Small Boat Trials event, the lightweight men's double sculls, the Cambridge Boat Club and USTC—Oklahoma City composite entry of Andrew Campbell (New Canaan, Conn.) and Will Daly (Vail, Colo.) finished off a winter of training in New Zealand with several heavyweight Kiwi crews with a convincing win. Campbell and Daly led from the early going and just kept increasing their lead, crossing first in 6:27.013 ahead of the GMS and USRowing Training Center-Oklahoma City composite crew of Jon Winter (New Haven, Conn,) and Austin Meyer (Cohoes, N.Y.) who finished in 6:33.050. In third was the Vesper Boat Club and Undine Boat Club composite entry of Nick Trojan (Los Alamitos, Calif.) and Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg (Philadelphia, Pa.) who finished in 6:37.232.
"It feels great," said Campbell. "We never come into one of these regattas expecting anything of ourselves and to see all that training pay off with a big win is unbelievable. We spent the winter doing some really great training in New Zealand with the men's heavyweight pair and the women's heavyweight quad under coach Dick Tonks and a lot of fierce steady state.
"So now it's on to Lucerne. Today we're winners, tomorrow we're humble. We have to pull off a big performance in Lucerne to go to the Olympics. We're going to go to the dance."
In all of the Non-Qualified Olympic Small Boats Trials events, the winning crews have earned the right to compete at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in May and attempt to qualify the boats for London.
The final event of the morning, the lightweight women's double was a six boat final, but one crew, California Rowing Club's Julie Nichols (Livermore, Calif.) and Kristin Hedstrom (Concord, Mass.), made it their own, pushing out of a tight pack in the first 500 meters to open up a lead they would not give back. They finished first in 7:08.002, followed by the Lake Union Boat Club's entry of Ursula Grobler (Pretoria, South Africa) and Hillary Saeger (Dedham, Mass.) who crossed next in 7:12.032 followed by the Oklahoma City High Performance Center entry of Chelsea Smith (Edina, Minn.) and Michelle Sechser (Folsom, Calif.) who finished in a time of 7:14.562.
Nichols and Hedstrom have earned the opportunity to go to Europe for the first two world cup stops. If that crew finishes in the top four, it will be named to the team. If it does not, the boat class will be included in the 2012 Olympic Trials - Rowing scheduled for June 11-14 in West Windsor, N.J.
"We've been working hard this year and all the other crews put up a great race. We're happy with how it went," Hedstrom said. "Now it's on to the next step here. We just wanted to complete this step and do what we had to do today and then move on.
"I want to thank our coach Dave O'Neill and Cal women's crew for all that support they have given us over the year and also Ken Jurkowski, who has been our training partner."