The next batch of 2015 US team candidates took a step closer to rowing with red white and blue blades in Aiguebelette France this August as winners were named in the men's and women's singles, light men's double, and men's quad at the second National Selection Regatta (NSR) of 2015 this morning.
As in the past, let's first outline how the NSR works:
- In National Selection Regatta events, the winner of each boat class may attend World Cup regatta II and/or III, and if they meet the placement standard, are named to the 2015 USA World Championships team in the event.
- The placement standards for the M1x, W1x, LM2x and M4x that were raced today are as follows: In order to be named to the 2015 team in these events, the boat must place in the top 7 at either 2015 FISA World Cup II or III, unless there are fewer than 12 entries in the event, in which case a finish in the top 50% of the field is required. For example in a 7 boat field, a 3rd place finish is required.
- Should any crew fail to meet the above criteria, the event will be contested again in a straight trials later in the summer
- You can see the full selection criteria on page 7 of the selection procedures here
Sometimes the NSR racing plays out in a very straightforward way, and sometimes not; we saw a bit of both this week. In the former category, that top two light men's doubles that raced here have been training together, so knew their relative speed; and in the men's single, Will Cowles's performance in the time trial seemed to put him a patch of open water ahead of the field, which is how things played out today.
The women's single and men's quad were an example of the latter, however. In the women's single, Emily Huelskamp had posted the fastest time in yesterday's semis, giving 2012 Olympic petite final winner Gevvie Stone something to work on overnight. And in the men's quad, the crew from California Rowing Club arguably upset a Craftsbury quad that contained three of the four members of last year's US men's quad.
We talked to each of the winners after the racing; in order of racing, here is what they had to say.
Men's Single Scull Will Cowles raced at last year's NSR in the double racing for Potomac, but this winter joined the ranks at Craftsbury, and found himself racing the single here today. Cowles had a good run in the single a few years back, though, and is not really a newcomer to the boat.
"I sort of just ended up in the single here; I recently made the move from Potomac to Craftsbury, which was tough," he said. "I’ve been at Potomac for a really long time and I love it there."
In fact, Cowles still has the Potomac star on his blades.
"Yeah, I still have the blades!" he said. "Craftsbury just has a great pool of athletes, and that’s hard to pass up. I think the long-term goal is still a team boat, but it was an opportunity to go hard and have a good race in a single. I’m excited about it."
He got his money's worth for getting race experience here, with a time trial in a raging and choppy tail, and much better conditions this morning in a light crosshead.
"For the time trial, I think in those types of conditions you just have to focus on boat speed more than the things you kind of think you know about rowing, because there’s a lot you can do in a tailwind like that to slow yourself down," he said. "Then this morning the conditions were pretty good, there was a little bit of crosswind out there but relatively pretty solid, and it’s just about finding a good rhythm."
Asked about the potential for racing in the formidable ranks of the men's single at World Cup and Worlds, Cowles was circumspect but eager.
"I haven’t really thought much about it, but it's a tough event so if racing them is in my future then that’s definitely a big challenge, but I look forward to it."
Women's Single Scull In the past few years since the 2012 Olympics, Gevvie Stone has been rowing around several other life endeavors, including getting an MD, starting rotations, and more. With some of those challenges met, this year she focused more intensely on her rowing again, which creates pressures of its own kind.
"For sure this year has been a lot more rowing focused," she said. "Especially compared to where you come out of school, and just go you race as hard as you can and see what happens. In a way that is like being the underdog because you have nothing to lose. This year I was entirely rowing focused, and though some would disagree, I felt like I came in as a favorite. That’s a less fun position to be in, because unlike having nothing to lose you have everything to lose.
"So when people were asking me, including some knowledgeable coaches, what my plans were in terms of competition after NSR, I kept saying my Dad (her coach Gregg Stone) and I haven’t talked about this. You have to accomplish step one before you get to step two. We haven’t had a formal conversation about what my plans are after this, but that’s just part of coming in as a favorite; you just still have to focus on getting every step done and executing. A race is a race and there’s always opportunities for things to go wrong."
Huelskamp's development as a sculler as well as her solid semi yesterday added to the focus on the current race.
"I think I let it get to me more than I should have," Stone admitted. " I didn’t execute a full race yesterday, so I knew that I had an extra gear left for the final today; I kept repeating that to myself, but it still definitely was there. In a way it was great because it motivated me, made me angry; I wanted to prove myself the favorite and really took it as motivation to prove that I’m the person to beat and I’m the fastest one out there."
Stone has now spent a number of years in the single, but last year experimented a bit with rowing in the double and quad during the early summer, but an experience she had last fall has made her appreciate the single a bit more.
"Last spring I felt like I really wanted to give the double a shot," she said. "Coming out of 2012, the Brits were so on top of the double that the rest of the field in a way cleared out. So it left a void in the double in 2013, and I think everyone noticed that. So the spring of 2014 I did want to give the double a shot.
"Fortunately I ended up in the single and the World Cup went well for me last year, but then World Championships did not go well. I was really frustrated after that, and was definitely considering other options. But then, it was funny, being around the Great Eight (at the Head Of The Charles), being around all these other singles and collective excitement about sculling in the single was really good for me. I was definitely a bit down on the single in September, but this year has made me really excited about it. I feel like things are going better than they have. I feel like technically I’m improving and it’s just been really fun. It’s an up and down process, and of course right now I'm on a high, and I’m excited to go to Europe and race."
Men's Quadruple Sculls Earlier this year, a number of scullers from various clubs got together toward selecting a "camp-ish" quad, but ultimately most returned to their disparate training situations and came together again at trials. While these types of trials tend to the be the most dramatic, the athletes did know a little more about each other than might have been the case in the past.
Or maybe not; a very similar Craftsbury lineup bested a California Rowing Club crew at this event last year, and it was a bit of a rematch here this weekend. The Craftsbury crew seemed on form after winning the time trial by over five seconds, but when they got side by side today, it was the CRC crew that nudged out to a small lead midway through the race, then charged away very nearly to reverse the result from the time trial with an full boat length win.
Knowing a little more about the competition doesn't make racing the quad in close quarters any less intense, though.
"This year was a little unique because we did some camps since January with some of the east coast guys," CRC stroke Hans Struzyna said. "We mixed it up, and they’ve decided that they wanted to do their thing and we decided we wanted to do our thing ultimately. We’ve raced a few times so we knew a little bit. It’s a new combination from what they had last year, so we knew they’d be fast and we just had to play it out and see where it went after that."
"We always just prepare for a tough race," added bow seat Paul Marcy. "We just stayed internal and executed our race plan. We started moving at base pace about 750 in, and then just stayed with that pretty much all the way to the last 200 meters (before sprinting)."
"We knew they would be quick off the line; they’re good oarsmen, they’re very clean, so there was no doubt they were going to be fast," added two-seat Ryan Shelton. "We just stayed relaxed because we’ve rowed a good rhythm before, and that’s a good strength of ours. As soon as we knew we settled into a good rhythm and made it to a thousand meters without feeling like we’d emptied everything out, we knew that at that point we had plenty more to give. So just hang on, and we started to move and knew that the race was in very good control with about 800 meters left or so."
Every good quad seems to have a guy who just calls it really straight and like it is, and today that crew member was three-seat John Madura. "We just pulled really hard and hope we win," he said. "I know we’re all really strong guys, so as long as we didn’t screw up we were going to have a good race and it was going to be close. I think our fitness kind of got us to the end."
Lightweight Men's Double Sculls Instead of the typical divide-and-conquer approach that trials events usually engender, this year a group of light men's scullers got together under the tutelage of Scott Roop and submitted to a selection process. The double of Josh Konieczny and Andrew Campbell emerged as the top double in the group, and put together a fast and dominant performance today, posting the best "percentage of World's Best Time" of the day at 95.1%. (Note however that the time of 6:10 used for the calculation in the official results is currently out of date, as the South African double went 6:05.36 at the 2014 Worlds).
Stroke Konieczny noted that the process had helped the crew gain confidence for the racing here.
"I think it just kept the whole thing a little bit more organized than it has been in the past so that we knew for sure going into it that this is our speed, this is how it is relative to other boats," he said. "It really just took a little bit of that anxiety away coming into the trial."
The duo had tried this combination back in the fall, but it didn't really gel until winter when the group headed south to train.
"We first rode together in the fall, and actually our first couple of rows we were the slower boat at steady state," Campbell notes. "But we started coming together late in the fall and then right when we got on the water in Clemson, we took off."
Konieczny thinks the crew is starting to approach its potential now.
"We're getting there," he said. "On both rows (the time trial and the final), we were focusing on just keeping everything relaxed, especially at the front end, and even in the conditions, we were able to do that pretty nicely. So now that we're starting to get that, we want to get that consistently for longer and longer. It's in the right direction."
Campbell, who has spent most of his elite career in the single save for a few months before the 2012 "sudden death" Olympic qualifier in 2012, is enjoying his time in the double.
"It's been a nice transition," he said. "I feel like I was definitely ready to move into the double, get a new challenge going. And Josh is a pleasure to row with. We're a super-low drama, super-focused boat. It's been great. "
The two National Selection Regattas thus far have named candidates for the 2015 US team in nine events - the men's and women's singles, the men's and women's open and lightweight doubles, the men's and women's pairs, and the men's quad – all of whom will likely attend the second World Cup in Varese, Italy June 19-21. As I noted after NSR1, the National Selection Regattas mark the true beginning of the Row to Rio; we will be following along, so keep an eye, it is going to be an exciting summer.