Exactly 365 days from today, the United States rowing team will begin competition at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
But with the final selection event for the 2015 World Rowing Championships team wrapping up today on Mercer Lake, West Windsor, N.J., and the full roster being set for the team that will compete August 29-Sept. 6, 2015 in Aiguebelette, France, the next real big step toward Rio is about qualifying boats.
Of the 26 events that will be contested on Lake Aiguebelette, 14 are Olympic-class boats and to avoid having to go through a grueling spring and a second chance qualification regatta, the U.S. is hoping to qualify as many boats as possible.
That doesn't mean the athletes aren't thinking about Rio. It's always in the back of their minds and the goal of every athlete on the team in an Olympic-class event is Rio.
Mike Gennaro goes to sleep every night telling himself he can do it, wanting to be there when the Games start. Will Daly looks in on the website that has a countdown clock and knows that after two Olympic cycles, this is his last opportunity. And he wants it. Meghan Musnicki acknowledges that it's easy to get anxious and worked up.
"It's almost three-hundred and sixty-five days away," said Musnicki. "In some sense, it feels like it was just London, and on the other hand it feels like it was so long ago. With rowing, and especially on the women's team, your seat is not guaranteed and I think that's a hard concept for outsiders to understand. So, yeah, it can get nerve-wracking."
But they are more aware that the Olympic year will be a completely different and much more difficult year if the team does not qualify the boats they have been focusing on since leaving London three years ago.
In the third year of the last 2012 Olympic cycle at the world championships on Lake Bled, Slovenia, the U.S. failed to qualify the men's eight, lightweight men's four and lightweight men's double sculls. What resulted was a training year that was focused on the getting those boats qualified at the last chance regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland. It meant spending more money and resources, more travel and more overall angst.
So while everyone thinks about Rio being one year out, they are thinking more about this summer.
To Curtis Jordan, USRowing's Director of High Performance, who was brought in to narrow the team's focus on a limited number of supported boats, an Olympic quadrennial is a four-year effort to build the best possible "platform," from which to launch the U.S. team in the direction of more Olympic medals than the three it took home in 2012.
"The whole effort is a four-year effort," said Jordan. "You're building a platform that kind of pinnacles in the Olympic year. When you're right in the middle of it, it's about tomorrow. What do I have to get done tomorrow? We do what we have to do for the following day and that keeps your focus pretty close.
"When we talk about the Olympics of 2016, that seems like a zillion years away because we have the world championships at the end of the summer, and I think that's where everybody's focus is right now. It's an important event for us, and a good watermark for our progress, an indicator of where we are. It makes a huge difference as to how well we do in 2015 and how that sets us up going into 2016. To ignore that would mean you're not really preparing your team correctly or giving them the best shot."
According to Jordan, the best possible result would be to not only qualify as many U.S. boats as possible, but to see that those boats are winning medals or within reach of a medal. "Qualifying boats for the Olympics is an essential step, but we are look to do more than just qualify," Jordan said.
"We are looking for a high level of performance. We are looking for boats with the ability to win medals. We think we have those boats both at the training center and in our high performance clubs."
So far, the plan as Jordan set it up when he joined USRowing appears to be working. At the World Rowing Cup 2 in Varese, Italy in June, the U.S. took home six medals from the priority boats. Of the seven priority boats, only the lightweight men's four did not compete.
The women's eight won gold, the men's four won gold, the women's pair took silver and the men's eight and women's quadruple sculls both won bronze medals. In addition, the U.S. got silver in the women's single and gold in the women's four. At World Cup 3 in Lucerne, the lightweight women's double won bronze. While the single and the lightweight women's double are not supported boats, Jordan said that any boat that reaches the final at the world championships will receive funding from USRowing towards training for Rio.
And now the pressure to qualify is on.
"Going into an Olympic year the focus is trying to keep the process on track, not letting people get distracted because it's an Olympic year. It's the same process. You train just as hard, you don't have to do anything significantly different, you just stay on focus, stay on target, stay on track," Jordan said.
As a veteran athlete and a London champion in the women's eight, Musnicki is used to the feel of an Olympic cycle.
"Every year, in some sense, is very different," she said. "You have very different goals, and very different, changing goals as the years go on. This year, as an entire squad, the main goal is to qualify boats for the Olympics next year. That's what our job is this year. We have to put all of the boats in a position to qualify so we can have the opportunity to just race at the Olympics next year."
The focus, she said, cannot be on Rio.
"I focus on a daily basis," she said. "I have smaller things that I work towards and smaller goals that will put me in a better position to have the opportunity to prove myself, to be in a boat for the Olympics. By if I only focus on making a boat for an Olympics that's over a year away it hinders my ability to accomplish the many things I want to accomplish before then as an athlete and a member of the team," Musnicki said.
Head women's coach Tom Terhaar instills in the athletes that idea of a singular focus, of being present and in the moment each and every day and working on improving the little things that can make the team faster to be in a position to medal.
But he will also admit that one year left is always in the back of his thoughts.
"Of course. It's in the back of your head the whole time," Terhaar said. "It's definitely there and as we get closer to it, it's always there. After last year, it's kind of like the grace period is done and now you have to make sure you're on the next couple of years, especially when you're dealing with younger athletes. It's always there now, but you try to focus on what we can do to get better and make sure we qualify some boats."
Like Musnicki, Gennaro was also in London. He was a spare. He was brought into the senior squad only for the fall of 2011 and spring of 2012 for the men's eight camp that had to put together a crew to qualify for London through Lucerne.
This is his first full cycle. And he knows how many days are left in it.
"It's been weird working on a four-year cycle because it's like having a job where there is an end game," Gennaro said. "We're looking ahead to Rio like it's the grand finale. So not only is there uncertainty as to how you're going to get to Rio, but there is a small thought in your mind as to what's going to happen after Rio. This is not a permanent, full-time job so it's strange in that sense. But it's been a wild ride so far. I find it fascinating that the world championships get more and more competitive each year as you lead up to it.
"We had a pretty good run in 2013, but now kind of looking back on it, that was just the post-Olympic year and it was probably the least competitive of the four years. Last year was even harder to medal and in 2015, not only medaling, but qualifying the boat is going to be even more of a challenge. And then the grand finale of them all is next summer. It's a tall order."
Gennaro said that anxiousness is also part of the unknown.
"You want to make the boat, and you want the boat to qualify. You want the boat to win. You want to help your teammates out. But there is definitely some personal anxiousness. You want it all to be worth it. You want all the sacrifices you made worth it. You go to bed every night telling yourself you can do this, this is why you are doing this and you really, really want it to happen, not only for your team but for yourself, for everybody that's looking out for you and helping along the way."
Of all the athletes in this cycle, Will Daly is the one of the most veteran. He rowed in the lightweight men's four in Beijing in 2008 and finished eighth, then missed qualifying the lightweight men's double in 2012. He is now back in the lightweight men's four. During his entire time on the senior team in the lightweight men's four, he has rowed in only one final.
That was at the 2013 World Rowing Championships where he finished fifth. This is his last cycle and Daly said when he thinks about one year out, he also thinks about this last opportunity.
"I think about not having the opportunity to win an Olympic medal or to wear a yellow leader's jersey at a world cup. There is a web site that counts down the days to Rio that I check periodically.
"But right now, there isn't as much focus on Rio except making sure we can go to it and qualifying at the world championships this year. We want to make sure we don't have to go to the qualification regatta next year. That's foremost in my mind," he said. "After having gone through the qualifying regatta last quadrennial, it's not an experience I want to repeat."