The A- and B-finals in all events set for tomorrow after a day of hard semifinals and reps here in Lucerne. As you'll see in our photo galleries, we had all four seasons on the lake during the racing, whew.
The USA squad in attendance will be racing for medals in seven A-Finals tomorrow, out of 11 events that have USA crews competing in them across the 14 Olympic boat classes; not a bad place to be just before Memorial Day. As we explained in yesterday's report, the USA group is in various stages of selection and training across the program, so varied results were to be expected.
Women's Events
Gevvie Stone in the W1x continued to display the quality of her preparation here, as she qualified for the final with a hard-fought, but nevertheless in-control second place in her semifinal, behind reigning world champion Kim Brennan, with Stone less than two seconds off the pace. With Stone rowing in the faster of the two semis, a medal tomorrow would not be out of reach.
Stone has been treating the Lucerne World Cup as her "dress rehearsal" for Rio, and the polish shows; we'll have feature on her focus on Lucerne later in the week.
The two USA Women's Pair combinations of Logan/Musnicki and Mueller/Luczak, racing in separate semis, both qualified for the A-Final today, with Mueller/Luczak running with the reigning World- and Olympic champs Glover/Stanning from the GB, and Logan/Musnicki winning their semi, actually with a slightly faster time than the other semi. Tomorrow's final sees USA crews on either side of Glover/Stanning in lanes 3-4-5 on the course.
Both pairs will be doubling into the Women's Eight; that final is about six hours after the pairs final. After the racing, USA Women's coach Tom Terhaar touched on the importance of the pairs result here. "Hopefully our top pair can come in the top four, then they can name themselves to the team if they want, that's the focus" explained Terhaar, while acknowledging the pressure that comes from doubling up. "It's a lot of racing in a short amount of time. We'll see how the race is tomorrow, I think it's going to be tough, and I also think the Brits have an entire different gear that they haven't even touched yet! We're happy to get a ton of racing in, and also to see where everyone is, they are progressing a bit each race, and hopefully there's enough gas in the tank to have a good pairs race."
Terhaar also spoke about the central role of the pair in the US's dominance of the Women's Eight, which will race about 6 hours after the pairs final tomorrow. "Basically, it's all set up for the pairs," said Terhaar. "Everyone is going in the pairs initially and competing against one another, then we're sorting it down to the quads. It's internally motivated, they know they have to perform well on the erg and in the pair, and then they're competitive, they want to win every time. I don't have to drive that hard, they drive."
Confounding some observers here has been the performance of the two US Women's quads; with both boats racing in today's rep, USA2 overhauled USA1 just before the finish line for the fourth and final lane in tomorrow's final. However, the current state of the selection process is playing a part, and Terhaar cautioned against overvaluing any results.
"We're not even close to done selecting the boat," said Terhaar. "This is similar to last year, where we came over to the World Cup and had a lineup, then we had a couple of other groups to help form the quad. Really, I don't think we're near selection with any of the boats. Unfortunately, I think it's going to go right until the end for selection because the level is so high, and everyone's so close. Hopefully they use tomorrow as an opportunity to give themselves a little bit more ground to stand on."
Mathematically, there are 1,680 different possible lineup permutations for the 8 athletes rowing in the two USA women's quads here in Lucerne, whew; all the best to the coaches and athletes as they complete this selection.
Men's Events
Both the US Men's Four and Eight are racing in the A-Finals tomorrow. The Men's Four is somewhat "under the radar," having qualified for the Final directly out of the heat, while the Eight definitely served notice of its front-end speed in the "race for lanes" yesterday. Both finals should be hugely entertaining based on the observed quality of racing.
Also making the final today, in one of the deeper and more competitive fields at the regatta, was the USA Men's Lightweight Double of Andrew Campbell and Josh Konieczny. A seat swap, and the attentive eye of coach Scott Roop seemed to have paid dividends for the crew this year as they've shown themselves able to run at speed with the top crews in their event, and are making their shots count each time down the course.
"Getting through the trials was a weight off their shoulders," said Roop. "They had a pretty good year last year, and this has been better. Each crew has sort of their own plan, and their own rhythm, and we're just trying to learn and grow. I think we're going better than we were last year at this time. The good thing that has come out of this trip is the ability to generate good speed out of the first half of the race and we've just go keep climbing into it. We've got two and a half months."
The Men's Double and Men's Quad came out on the tough end of their respective semi and reps today, with the Quad going down on the wrong side of a photofinish for the third time in seven days; their heat at the Olympic Qualifier was .14, the rep was .03, and today's rep result for the last A-Final slot was .12, for a grand total of .29 seconds missing for advancement or a better lane across three races. Inches, indeed.
Ken Jurkowski finished up an arduous week here in Lucerne with a win in the C-Final of the Men's Single, having raced both the Olympic Qualifier this past weekend, and the World Cup. Tom Graves, rowing as USA2, raced in the C-Final as well, finishing fourth.
The non-Olympic "international" events here, the lightweight men's and women's singles and the light men's pairs are on the speed-dating plan this weekend: heats and reps friday, semis and finals on Saturday. Representing the US here are World Championships hopefuls Michelle Sechser in the LW1x, and Hugh McAdams and Austin Meyer in the LM1x.
Sechser made the best of her quick turnaround, finishing fourth in the afternoon final, while Meyer and McAdams both raced in the B-Final this afternoon, finishing 8th and 9th overall, less than half a second apart.
The USA Women's Lightweight double of Katie Bertko and Devery Karcz concluded a rough World Cup slightly ahead of schedule, with the crew withdrawing after Friday's reps due to a medical issue in the crew.
Something that a few folks, both online and off, mentioned after the heats yesterday: the heats in the Lightweight Men's Four went virtually the same speed as the heats in the Men's Four, rowed in near identical conditions 15 minutes apart (indeed, the third-fastest time overall of all straight fours was the NZ LM4-, less than 1 second behind the markers posted by the NED and USA open crews). "Is this the nail in the coffin for Lightweight Men's rowing?" asked one observer. With the Light Men's Four one of the boats that is on the Olympic "chopping block" for 2020, these congruities are certainly going to be watched, this weekend and beyond.
Best post-finals comment today came from the Mexico Women's Single sculls, who, after finishing second in the C-Final, was paddling by the dock, flashed a quick smile and gave a quiet "Ole!" to someone in the stands.
No one can claim that there are no jobs for Olympic rowers after they hang up their oars; fully 3/4 of the gold medal winning GB four from the Sydney Olympics are here in the media area this afternoon.
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