WEST WINDSOR, N.J. - It's anyone's game now.
Following two days of heats and repechages on Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J. this week, the final four boats in 12 of 13 events at the 2011 Senior World Championship Trials in West Windsor, N.J., have been sorted out.
In contention to represent the United States at the 2011 World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia are five Olympic events including the women's single sculls, men's double sculls, men's pair, women's pair and lightweight men's double sculls and seven non-Olympic events including the lightweight men's single sculls, lightweight women's single sculls, lightweight men's pair, men's pair with coxswain, lightweight men's quadruple sculls, lightweight women's quadruple sculls and the women's four. The lightweight men's eight is rowing uncontested.
Today's racing featured repechages in the men's pair and the men's double sculls, and semifinals in the women single sculls and the lightweight men's single sculls.
After the first of this morning's semifinals, a showdown has been set between last year's U.S. women's single sculler, Lindsay Meyer (Seattle, Wash.), from the Seattle Rowing Center, and Cambridge Boat Club's Gevvie Stone (Newton, Mass.).
The final will also feature Beijing Olympian and four-time national team sculler Margot Shumway (Westlake, Ohio) and Union Boat Club's Mae Joyce Gay (Greenville, S.C.). Shumway, who finished fifth in the women's single sculls at the 2009 World Rowing Championships, beat Stone in the second semifinal by just over two seconds.
Meyer, who rowed injured at last year's world championships in New Zealand and placed 10th, finished behind Gay by less than a second this morning.
At trials last year, Stone beat Meyer in the heat, but then lost her bid for the national team to Meyer in the final.
"The race was okay," Meyer said of her semifinal. "It's getting better, four boats in the final. It's anyone's game. It should be fun."
Stone, who won National Selection Regatta #1, but could not place high enough at any of the world cup stops this summer to secure a spot on the national team, said she expects the race to be tight.
"I hope to win," she said. "That's why I'm here. It's going to be a tough race. It's a tough field, but yeah, I hope to win.
"I had a good start. Margot's was fast too. All four of us were off the line together and then Margot and I got ahead around a little bit past the 250 (meter mark) and were pretty close until the 1,000 (meter mark), racing at a good speed. Then we had enough margin on the rest of the field to take it down and get ready for tomorrow."
Advancing to the final in the first repechage of the of the men's pair was USRowing Training Center-Chula Vista's Matthew Wheeler (Palo Alto, Calif.) and David Banks (Potomac, Md.) with a time of 6:59.12. Advancing from the second race in a time of 7:00.48 was Penn A.C. Rowing Association's Stephen Kasprzyk (Cinnaminson, N.J.) and Joseph Spencer (Washington, D.C.).
They will be joined in the final by USTC-Oklahoma City's entries of Tom Peszek (Farmington Hills, Mich.) and Justin Stangel (Madison, Wis.) and Silas Stafford (Santa Rosa, Calif.) and Ryan Monaghan (Pittsford, N.Y.).
"It was a pretty solid race," Banks said. "There were two boats there, someone had to win. We just tried to stay solid, stay aggressive and have a good race. Matt did really well in his second race there in a pair. It was good, stroking a pair like that, so he did well," he said.
"We're just trying to go all the way through. We want to have a solid regatta and get better each race. So tomorrow is the final and we're just going to go out and try to have a solid race, see how it goes. Anything can happen."
In the men's double sculls repechage, the composite crew of Stephen Whelpley (Moquon, Wis.) and William Cowles (Farmington, Conn.) and Durham Boat Club's Michael Sivigny (Hudson, N.H.) and Deaglan McEachern (Portsmouth, N.H.) advanced to the final.
Whelpley and Cowles, and Sivigny and McEachern, held the top two positions for what appeared to be most of the race. They were pushed hard by the USTC-Oklahoma City entry until the Durham crew dug in, ensuring them a spot in the final.
They will face Craftsbury Sculling Center brothers Tom and Peter Graves (Cincinnati, Ohio) and USTC-Chula Vista's Wes Piermarini (West Brookfield, Mass.) and Jamie Koven (Green Village, N.Y.) tomorrow morning.
"We stayed long; we probably could have shortened up the stroke a little bit in the sprint," said Sivigny. "But we just held our ground and stayed ahead of the OKC boat. They moved into us a little bit but we stayed in front, if I remember right,"
"It looks pretty good," he said of the upcoming final. "Now there are four of us. We're just focused on more rhythm and more run. We'll work on our finish tonight and hopefully we're coming out on top. That's the goal."
Advancing to the semifinals of the lightweight men's singles sculls were Cambridge Boat Club's Andrew Campbell (New Canaan, Conn.), Riverside Boat Club's Andrew Hashway (Watertown, Mass.), Colorado Rowing's Greg Ruckman (Cincinnati, Ohio) and Undine Boat Club's Andy Quinn (Honeoye Falls, N.Y.).
Racing resumes tomorrow with finals in all events beginning at 7:30 a.m. Heat sheets and results are available at www.usrowing.org. Finals will be streamed live on http://rowing.teamusa.org/live.