Over the last 11 world championships and Olympics, one constant of the women's field has been the dominance of the United States women's eight. The US holds the world best time (5:54.16, set in 2013 at the Lucerne World Cup), has won 11 straight World Championships including three-straight Olympic titles, and has been beaten just three times since 2006.
All three losses came at World Cup events in post-Olympic years, including silver medal finishes in 2009 and 2013, and bronze this year at the second world cup in Poznan, Poland. In each of those years, the World Cup results were followed by wins at the World Championships.
That makes the US will be the team to beat in Sarasota and a media focus when the competition begins.
None of that concerns head women's coach Tom Terhaar. "The stats make a good headline," Terhaar said,"but that's the way it is. It's fine. We've lost a few times over the years; streaks don't really do anything for me."
"Do I think about (the 11 year streak)? Not really," he said. "I think about only how are we going to get these women to perform at their highest level and how we are going to set the stage for the next four years, because quite honestly, setting the right strategy for the next four years is more important than just trying to win just one race on just one day."
Talk about defending a streak is also something that is also avoided in the women's Princeton training center. The athletes might think about it, but it's not something that is openly discussed.
Said first year senor team athlete Sarah Dougherty, who was named to the eight in August:
"I feel like those words are never really spoken, and I think it is kind of something that is fine to be unspoken because we all know what we expect of each other," she said. "We don’t like to think about an end result. We think more about the process to get there.
"We all trust Tom's program, and Tom. So it's fine to say I'm a little bit nervous, but I'm only nervous to just not do our best because I know our best will be a reflection of all the work we put in this year."
Still, Terhaar said, questions about defending a string of championships isn't a terrible problem to have.
"I guess it's a better question to have than why haven't you won in eleven years."
Women's Four
Another focus of the coming World Championships for the women will be the changes in the Olympic schedule that were passed at the 2017 Extraordinary Congress when the lightweight men's four was eliminated and the women's four was added in.
The women's four has been primarily used at World Championships and World Cup events as a development boat. It was a lightly subscribed event that was even dropped from the senior women's world championship for 2012 and then added back in in 2013 – and now it is an Olympic event.
Some early speculation about the impact of the addition of the four centered on how it would affect the number of countries that enter a women's eight, meaning that if a federation doesn't feel it can compete for a medal in the eight, it would just enter a four and focus resources there.
This year, there are two fewer entries in the women's eight over the 10 that competed in the previous two world championships in 2014 and 2015. There is however, a jump in the fours entries. Fifteen countries have crews entered in the four, the same number as entered in the 2016 senior world championships. There were only five in 2015 World Rowing Championships.
Asked he felt the addition of the four would have an impact on the competitive level of the women's eight, Terhaar pointed to a similar early view of the impact that Title IX would have on the strength on NCAA women's rowing.
"This is the Olympics, and everyone who is winning, medaling or going for it, is fast," Terhaar said. "The counter argument is when women's rowing became an NCAA sport, it was being said that all these programs will water down the talent.
"And what happened? It got filled in and the level was only raised, and I think that's what we're going to see happen. You are going to have to be very fast and very fit to medal in any event. Everyone in the world wants an Olympic medal, so I don't think it will water anything down. It will just provide more opportunity for women to perform at a higher level," he said.
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