The first National Selection Regatta and speed order of 2015 determined the selection of five crews to go race for the United States at a World Cup and, if all goes well, the World Championships – and as such was an immensely critical regatta for everyone racing.
But more than that, it was also arguably the first true event of the 2016 Olympic campaign, as in each of the five NSR events raced this week – the men's and women's pairs, the men's and women's doubles, and the light women's double – the crew racing for the US at Worlds will be charged with qualifying their country for the Rio Olympics in their event. So yeah, this week's racing mattered.
And it wasn't an easy or straightforward week of racing; the ongoing reticence of spring 2015 finally to show up as near-freezing temps and high winds caused course closings for practices and racing alike, including cancelled heats in some speed order events. April showers would have been nothing – this felt more like the lion's share of March.
So it is clear, this regatta works like this:
- For the five "National Selection Regatta" events – the women's pair, the men's pair, the women's double, the men's double, and the lightweight women's double – the winner of the event may attend World Cup regatta II and/or III, and if they meet the placement standard, are named to the World Championships team in the event. The placement standards for these events are as follows: W2- and LW2x must place top four at the World Cup, unless there are fewer than 8 entries, in which case they must place in the top 50% of the field; the M2-, M2x, and W2x must place in the top seven, unless there are fewer than 12 entries, in which case they must place in the top 50 of the field. You can see the full selection criteria on page 7 of the selection procedures here.
- For the Speed Order events, the regatta functions solely as a chance to race other candidates for the national team, and has no official selection implications.
Light Women's Double The last event of the NSR was the craziest, so let's start there; in particular, the "misadventure" rule came into play when Michelle Sechser, stroke of the eventual winning double rowing with Devery Karz,
snapped an oar in half just over the 500 meter mark. Referee Ruth McNamara quickly stopped the race, and then ferried the duo back to the dock to fix their equipment.
Speaking to the
duo of Sechser and partner Devery Karz after the racing, they noted they did not hit any debris, or a buoy, or anything else; Sechser just straight snapped the oar mid-race.
We came off the line, felt really good, and all of a sudden I heard the crack," Karz said after the race. "No buoy, nothing; it just broke in one stroke. It was a little terrifying, especially as amped up as we are in the first 500 when all the adrenaline is rushing. It was strange, you just stare at it. I thought, 'Do I keep rowing by myself?'"
Sechser credited Karz with keeping her calm after the incident. "Devery kept me in check as she always does, but I think part of this whole regatta for us is just starting to perform and behave as top level Olympic athletes," she said. "Whether that’s in the race or off the water, when something like this happens, you just learn to roll with it."
Sechser had a similar take on the challenging conditions that kept crews off the water the day before.
"This race was not going to be determined because of a Friday practice," she said. "This happened thousands and thousands of meters logged throughout the winter months."
The crew won last year's NSR as well, arguably in a bit of an upset, but a year on has gained some perspective and seasoning in the process.
"We relocated to Vesper this year, and with that we opened ourselves back up to selection for new doubles partners," Sechser said. "It was terrifying in a lot of ways, and it was a very big risk. It sort of makes you check yourself, and think who am I and what am I capable of, but going through that process and competing day after day for earning these seats back in the double ultimately made us very much faster. I was motivated throughout all the winter months to earn this seat in the boat with you (indicating Karz). I worked hard because I wanted to get you as a double’s partner. It was scary but it was the best thing we could have done for ourselves."
With another year under their belts, how did the approach to the racing and the final evolve?
"It’s the same feeling lining up at the start line, knowing that you are going to put yourself in the pain cave to race, but it’s encouraging because you think about having another year under your belt," Karz said. "I have worked that much harder but, it’s the same checkpoints - get through the first 500, here’s the 750, here’s the thousand, here’s the power line, here’s the gazebo - it never changes. It might be a year later but as long as you’ve done the right things, then the only thing that you’re going to have at that starting line is a little more confidence."
Finally, for the wonks out there, the crew's winning time was at 95.6% of the gold standard.
Men's Double The men's double was won by the
Craftsbury duo of John Graves and Ben Dann, who rowed together in the quad last year. As a result the crew has a bit of a head start on matching up, but with less than two weeks in the boat this year so far, felt like they are just coming together as a crew – and weren't helped by the crazy conditions all week.
"No one has been able to practice obviously all week, so I feel like we’ve been kind of a little bit rusty out there," Graves said. "Today was actually a little calmer, and it was nice to kind of have a better feeling row. It’s been a little bit of a challenge I think for us just kind of getting on the same page. We were happy to just get down the course and get the job done. It’s been a really tough week technically."
The duo has rowed the double before, however, and in accord with the saying that doubles are born, not made, has gone well from the start – but it is only a start.
"From the first time we ran it a couple years ago it has clicked pretty well," Graves said. "I just think there are some finer points that we know that are there and we haven’t quite unlocked them this year yet, but we know that it’s something that we can get with just a little more time."
Dann added that the crew hasn't quite found their cruising speed, describing the situation in interesting terms to say the least.
"We have this kind of stroke-rating window we just call the dead zone," he said. "Maybe the rate is too low for guys of our size and our ability. We just go slow. We could probably go faster at an even lower rate if we wanted to. But the dead zone was just where we kind of found ourselves, so we realized we just have to actually race to get out of it."
They did, and pulled it off – though it is worth noting not without a bump or two along the way – Graves lost his oar at around the 1100 meter mark, and took a couple "hand down the shaft" strokes before recovering, whew.
The duo will head to the World Cup, but hasn't quite given up on the quad just yet, so there may be more to the story in the men's double this year.
The crew raced the course in 6:29.16, 92.5% of gold standard.
Women's Double The
women's double of Meghan O'Leary and Ellen Tomek are arguably taking a different approach to the usual "American way" of training, choosing to stay together over an extended period of time, with the same coach and the same lineup. It's an experiment and approach that seems to suit them, although it is not without its challenges.
"Coming into it as kind of the incumbent double, or incumbent boat, you do have a target on your back and people might be hoping that you either mess up, or they’re gunning for you," O'Leary said. "It can be a lot of pressure. We’ve been lucky enough to create a training environment for ourselves. We train with lightweight men, and we’ve hooked up with lightweight doubles at times just to test our speed and to know what we have coming in. That helped us feel confident that no matter who we line up next to we’re confident that we can race our race and put up the time that can win."
We also try to hold ourselves to a ridiculously high standard," Tomek said. "Sometimes our coaches get mad because we come off the water and maybe we have one percentages (speed compared to time standard or projected pace), but to us it’s not enough because we’re always trying to get to that hundred percent, even if it were at stroke rate 26. We’re just making sure we push ourselves every day. We drive each other crazy, drive our coaches crazy, sometimes drive the people we’re training with crazy. But we don’t know who’s going to show up at the NSR, so we have to make sure that we’re fast enough so that we can get to Europe. The main goal is winning a medal, and we can’t do that if we don’t win here."
O'Leary added that, if they do all that and don't win, they have still done their job. "We want to be able to know that we’re fast enough to be here, and if another crew beats us then they should be fast enough to do really well internationally."
The crew did lean on their experience and time together to get through the week. "We have been a crew together for a while; we are wiser, we’re older," O'Leary said. "I think that works to our advantage in terms of approaching the race with focus and not letting all those wacky things affect us in a way that it can."
"Crazy things like that seem to happen to us in practice anyway," Tomek added.
And in the race as well; like Graves, O'Leary lost her oar during the race – making it a three-fer for oar mishaps in the doubles today, whew.
The double covered the 2k in 6:59.39, 94.7% of gold standard.
Women's Pair The
women's pair of Felice Mueller and Elle Logan came out on top of a field of six USTC crews, all of whom finished at better than 95% of gold standard – yikes. To do it they had to best the defending world silver medalists in the pair (Kerry Simmonds and Megan Kalmoe, who placed second), and go 7:01.19, 97.6% of gold standard. Easy does it folks, it's April 2015!
But that's what it takes to win the women's pair at NSR1.
"I think that that’s what makes us really competitive," Logan said. "It’s never certain that you can do it, as you're always having to compete against the best rowers in the world. It’s hard but it’s our strength."
Mueller has a somewhat secret run of success in the pair, and you have to go back a few years to find it. She was in the winning pair at the 2011 U23 Worlds, and won the event in 2010 as well, setting a world record in the process. I asked her what it is about the boat that suits her so well.
"I’ve been racing this boat for a long time," she said. "I like how you can feel everything. I really like sculling as well, but I like that in sweep you have to work more with the other person because you’re balancing them out. It’s not like you’re both doing the same thing. I think it’s really challenging to be able to walk this line of sinking in and feeling the boat and then going really, really hard. It’s a challenge but it’s really fun; that’s why I like this boat."
In the past few years, the US women have entered a number of crews in the World Cup pair events – in one year there were four US crews in the A final - and sometimes they stay in the pair afterward, and other times they don't. It remains to be seen whether this pair will race intact at Worlds, although it is a pretty strong likelihood that the deep field of US women's pairs will pull into a starting line together again this year, whether abroad, at home, or both.
Men's Pair Coming to the line, the
winning men's pair of Alex Karwoski and Matt Miller had a nice fluid move away from the finish, and were scooting away from the field on the merits of it. It turns out that the ability to do it came out of having had trouble with it when they first got in the boat in the past couple weeks. I asked them how they went about it.
"I think in the last 300 we had been very efficient before that, so it was sort of the work that we put in, or the efficient rowing before we got to that point that allowed us to row smoothly in the last 300," Miller said. "Then we’ve just been working on a number of technical points over the last few weeks on our own and with the coach’s help."
"Our issue has never really been power," Karwoski said. "He (Matt) is the strongest guy on the team and one of the strongest guys in the world with a 5:40 and change 2k, which obviously helps in the pair being a small boat. So we jumped in and we made the drives feel great, but realized we can’t slow it down as we come around the finish. So our big thing was staying on the feet and pulling the boat underneath you versus trying to stomp on it as you get up there.
"One of the drills that we started early was quarter feather drill," Miller said. "A lot of times I wasn’t completing the stroke well enough, and that would cause the boat to tip to one side or the other. Quarter feather forces you to set the boat and also allows you to more easily complete through the finish on the drive.
"Another big one from the coaches was rowing half slide and quarter slide, because since they’re shorter strokes you take more of them and in doing so you get more comfortable with where the hands are going, especially in the pair where there’s only two of you."
The pair went 6:31.34, 94% of a pretty gnarly gold standard (6:08 by the Kiwi pair).
Men's Sweep Outlook After the racing, men's sweep co-head coach Bryan Volpenhein expressed satisfaction with the racing, despite the fact that four of the top athletes from the camp did not race; Glenn Ochal and Henrik Rummel were out with the flu, and Steve Kaxperzyk and Grant James are on the mend from back injuries.
"Glenn and Henrik just got the flu last week, so racing them now is not going to help them long-term. Then Steve and Grant had some back issues at the end of San Diego camp, and we didn't want to force their recovery just to be able to race. We want to think more long-term. What you see here, and add those four guys in, that's the full group, so we have to manage the personnel a little bit and make sure they’re all healthy by the end of the summer.
"So I was happy with the racing today. There were a couple younger guys that got in some combinations they probably wouldn’t have been in if we had all their guys healthy, and they stepped up and they raced well today. That’s good, and I think the overall level is pretty good. With two Olympians out and two medalists out, you add those guys back in and it raises the middle of the group up a bit, and then it pushes that top pair even a little bit further, and maybe make it a little bit faster that way.
"Charlie and Glenn are also very good, and on any given day I think wed have three pairs that could have won that race. Getting those guys back and healthy next week is going to be pretty important for us in making sure that we keep progressing in the four and the eight. Our job is the four and the eight, so this for us is just a step along the way."
The focus on the four and eight doesn't preclude the winning pair from racing intact all summer.
"That’s definitely been talked about," he said. "We have three pairs that are pretty competitive, so you would think out of that you could make a good four and a pair. It all depends on what happens with the eight and how that develops over the next few weeks, then we’ll decide what we want to send to that World Cup, but it could be good to do it (race the pair intact) because one, it would give them experience and confidence in that pair. It would give them that responsibility to learn and become a little bit more mature racers and more mature athletes, and it could give the team confidence if they do well. And then if they don’t end up racing the pair they come back in one of the other boats."
Now it's back to work.
"The Vesper pair did a good job, I think our guys all raced hard and raced well, and I think they’re going to get better as the summer goes. Based on what we did in San Diego, I think we have a pretty good idea now of how this team is going to look going forward. We'll test a few more things and see what we get.
The end of the first National Selection Regatta marks the true beginning of the Row to Rio; here we go, folks!