Six crews and three Para athletes in advanced one step closer to making the US World Championship team with wins at the 2023 National Selection Regatta (NSR) this past week.
In the Finals on Friday, Kara Kohler and Jacob Plihal won in the Singles; Kristi Wagner and Lauren O'Connor won the Women's Double while Ben Davison and Sorin Koszyk won the Men's Double; and crews from the California Rowing Club won both Pairs events: Meghan Musnicki and Alie Rusher in the Women's event and Michael Grady and Liam Corrigan in the Men's event.
The closest finishes came in the Women's Double and Pair: Wagner and O'Connor edged out Sophia Vitas and Emily Kallfelz by less than half-a second, and Musnicki and Rusher took their win by less than a second over Claire Collins and Molly Bruggeman.
These NSR winners earned the chance to race at World Cup 2, where a competitive finish--top 6 or as otherwise defined in the Selection Procedures depending on the number of high-quality entries--will earn them the chance to qualify directly for the Worlds team in their event. According to USRowing, only the Men's Pair declined that option; the winners will remain in the selection process for the men's eight and four (as well as for potential pairs trialists), and the men's pair will go to trials later this summer.
For the rest of national team hopefuls gathered in Chula Vista this past week, the NSR was just the first event on the selection agenda. Next up will be the nearly month-long Olympic Events Selection Camp I for the athletes who earned invitations; this camp in Chula Vista will pick the top performing athletes and send them to get racing experience at World Cup 2 alongside the NSR winners.
Thus, earning the top spot at the NSR gives those athletes the inside track in their respective events and each could punch their own tickets outright with strong results at World Cup 2 in Varese, but there are other opportunities ahead for the athletes moving the fastest at this point as this first Selection Camp gets underway.
The two Para events at this NSR featured just one entry apiece: Russell Gernaat, the Tokyo Paralympian and 2022 National Team member, teamed up with Madison Eberhard in the PR2 Mixed Double; and Andrew Mangan also returned from the 2022 National Team to race the PR1 Single.
Gernaat, who raced the PR2 Single in Racice, used the NSR to make the switch back into the PR2 Double, the event he raced in the Tokyo Paralympics. Eberhard, his new partner for the event, last competed for the US Team in 2019. The NSR Para events are part of a selection pathway that includes the chance to race at the Gavirate International Para-Rowing Regatta in June, and all three Para athletes accepted their bids to race there.
The Gavirate Regatta will serve the same role for Para Selection as World Cup 2 for the Olympic events. The Selection Procedures, of course, lay out the specifics for the qualification standards at those international regattas, and you can read them here, but the key element at every step in the process is to be the top US crew in your event at each racing opportunity, so let's hear from the folks who won.
First, though, we should also note that weather was an entrant in the proceedings out in Chula Vista, just as it was--in the form of session-shifting wind--during the Winter Speed Order in Sarasota. Here weather played its hand in the form of fog delays and floating mats of reeds that had to be raked from the course, which meant a lot Instagram stories about both, posted by the athletes waiting out the downtime.
Women's Double
The Women's Double featured not only the close 0.5 second margin noted above but also produced the highest percentages of the regatta relative to the USRowing Competitive Standard Times (CST), a measure used to predict how competitive a crew should be in international competition in their event. Both Wagner and O'Connor in first as well as Vitas and Kallfelz in that very close second went 96% of the CST in the event, and both crews were ten seconds clear of the field.
Of course, Wagner and Vitas were already A Finalists at Worlds in this event when they rowed the double together last year--they finished fifth in Racice--but it is clear that their new combinations are also performing at a high level, and that excites Wagner for the next step of the process.
"It's super cool to see the women's doubles with the fastest percentages of the regatta," Wagner said after the racing. "I have so much respect for everyone but especially the female scullers. I just feel really lucky to be part of this group and excited to see what this year will lead to.
"It was a fun race," she said, "really fun to go down the track next to another fast boat and obviously we are happy we won today. I love rowing the double, and it has been a new and exciting experience with Lauren. She's made the past few weeks really fun."
Wagner and O'Connor, who for her part made a splash at the Winter Speed Order by finishing second, train together at ARION in Saratoga Springs.
"I was super excited to row with Lauren and get to train in Saratoga with ARION," said Wagner. "We've had a really fun block of training. We had a bunch of our teammates prepping and racing at the Pan Am qualifier and then three of us are racing at this NSR, but it was so great to just be home with the team and go after it every day."
For her part, O'Connor felt great about their race, and the finish, afterward:
"Kristi and I got to go head to head with some great competition for the first time and it was great to see how we measured up. The sprint was definitely a pivotal moment for us and that's something we had been working on a lot back home, so I think that really paid off.
"I think the idea for this lineup has been bounced around for a while, so it was super fun to actually get into a boat with Kristi and see how much speed we actually have," she said. "I'm so thankful for the whole group at ARION for helping me get to this point. I feel incredibly lucky to have a coach who is so knowledgeable and so willing to put the effort in to help me reach my full potential. On top of that I have such a great group of teammates who push me to be my best every day. ARION as a whole has been so pivotal in getting me to this point in my career."
Men's Double
The Men's Double was also won by a new combination, with CRC teammates Sorin Koszyk and Ben Davison giving the team boat a try after taking the top two spots in the single at the Winter Speed Order.
"The racing today was okay," said Davison, "and we were pretty happy with the Time Trial [on Tuesday]. We're still a pretty new combination, and so we've had a bit of trying to match things up in the past couple of weeks. We've had some good pieces, and we've had some decent pieces, and we've just started putting it together.
"In training, we've seen that we've got speed and we've got a good thing going here together, so it's just more time practicing and we'll get some more consistency."
Both Davison, who rowed the Single at Worlds last year, and Koszyk, who won the Speed Order in the single and might have had an inside track on the 1x at least so far this year, decided to put aside that event to focus instead on the double.
"Sorin's an incredible athlete and I think we've clicked quite well together on a personal level. I think we just thought, 'Well, let's give this a try.' We had some good pieces right off the bat, with good times and good percentages.
"We're both going decently fast in the single and we both felt like, let's give this a go, and it seems to be clicking quite well."
Both the single and the double in the Olympic Qualifying year will be tough events, Davison conceded.
"I don't think, between the two of them, that there's an 'easier' option, but as we jumped in together, we could see that the percentages are faster in the double than they are in the single. So we thought that we could give the double a try this year, and we'll stick to it."
Men's Single
Jacob Plihal had himself quite the April in the single before capping it off with this NSR win over CRC's Andrew LaRoux and the NYAC's Finn Putnam. Plihal, in pursuing the single berth he won at the US Pan Am Trials last fall, spent the month traveling to Chile so he could qualify for the Pan Am Games themselves in October. There, he did his qualifying emphatically, with a dramatic sprint into the lead in the final quarter to win gold--then he headed straight to California to get ready to race here.
"I think just the race experience in Chile was invaluable," said Plihal, who trains with the Green Racing Project. "We don't get a lot of opportunities to race domestically or even internationally in a typical season, especially when you compare our sport to others such as the NBA for example, where they have 82 game seasons. So I think just having another opportunity to line up against a field of fast single scullers before racing the NSR was a great preparation.
"The race went as well as it could have for today. I'd been having some troubles with my starts earlier in the week and was able to get that cleaned up today which helped me stay with the pack in the opening 1k."
Plihal also mentioned how he approached his Chile-to-Chula Vista expedition.
"As for the approach, I thought Chile was a well executed trip. Unfortunately I came down with a bit of a cold on the trip from Chile to California, so this week has been a lot about managing that as well as the excessive travel, in tandem with the regatta progression. Luckily with my coach Steve Whelpley's guidance, it seems like we laid out a good plan that allowed me to execute well on the day of the final.
"I really enjoyed racing all the guys here this weekend. We had a solid group of rowers and it's always fun to throw down on the race course with them."
Plihal's busy year will now continue with World Cup 2, where he can solidify his spot in the single for Worlds--and qualify for the four plus rounds of 1x racing there--before he ends his 2023 at the Pan Am Games in October.
Women's Single
Kara Kohler's win the Women's Single put her right back where she ended last season: back in the single, which is where she has decided she wants to be. "I started off this season being crystal clear that my goal for the season and for myself was the single," Kohler said. "I still have to clear all the hurdles to get there and nothing's set; I still have to show my speed in Europe and qualify. I'm taking it one step at a time, but that's been my goal, to simplify things this year.
"Last year, I was testing out both the double and single, and I think that was good, but ultimately, I really wanted to be in the single. So I took that experience into this year, and just from the get-go made [the single] that my top goal. And I think that always makes it pretty simple."
With Kohler clearly focused on the single and many of the other open weight scullers racing the Doubles event at this NSR, the biggest competition in the open weight single came from lightweight sculler Michelle Sechser. Kohler had her eye on Sechser, who did win the opening time trial by a fraction.
"I was taking it race by race," said Kohler, "but obviously Michelle is a lightweight racing as a heavyweight but very much a mighty lightie. I certainly had her in my head, knowing she's going to throw down no matter who she is up against, and I think she has been showing some incredible lightweight speed. She definitely had me on my 'A' game."
Men's and Women's Pairs
The Men's Pair racing featured the only "repeat winner" from the Winter Speed Order, as Michael Grady and Liam Corrigan continued to be the duo setting the standard on the sweep side. The field in the Men's Pair came entirely from training group at the California Rowing Club, and the intrasquad affair showcased the depth of the CRC group: the second and third place crews finished within five seconds of Grady and Corrigan--those pairs being Henry Hollingsworth and Pieter Quinton, the stroke of last year's Men's Eight in Racice, and Oliver Bub and Justin Best, who was in the top pair with Grady all last season, when they won the B Final at Worlds.
In the end, Grady and Corrigan were the only winning crew to decline their automatic bid to race as the Men's Pair at the World Cup, so that will keep the Men's pair open as a Trials boat later this year, and allows Grady and Corrigan to see what other combinations or crews might be options for their considerable talents during Selection Camp.
The Women's Pair offered a contrast in three ways: an even tighter race, crews from three separate clubs--the Princeton Training Center group, CRC, and Craftsbury's Green Racing Project--and winners, in Meghan Musnicki and Alie Rusher, quick to accept the chance to race the boat at the World Cup.
At the finish, just two seconds separated the top three crews, with the new PTC combination of Claire Collins--the 2022 Worlds bronze medalist in this event--and Molly Bruggeman in second, and GRP's Mary Mazzio-Manson and Emily Froehlich improving to third after taking sixth in the Winter Speed Order.
The Musnicki/Rusher pair came together just before the Winter Speed Order--a story of cross-country texts and flights which we covered a few weeks back--and had what Musnicki aptly called a "great race" after having a few weeks to actually train together with Rusher out in Oakland.
"That's what boat racing's all about," said Musnicki about the win, and talked about how the training has gone for her and her new partner.
"After the Speed Order, we hadn't been in the boat a lot yet, so we went back to CRC and just got in the boat and started training in the boat regularly. With Mike [Teti] and Skip [Kielt] coaching us, we just fell into training with the guys that are out there as well and there's really nothing more than that; we didn't do anything super different or super special. It was just getting back into the swing of training, being in a boat consistently together, and making changes. It's been great to train with Alie.
"We were confident in that we had some good speed initially and wanted to see how much further we could push it and see if we continue to develop that speed by spending more time together in the boat. That was the goal.
"Alie and I are going to go race at the World Cup, and that's pretty exciting. We'll stay down here in Chula Vista for a little while, because it'll be great to be with such fast boats of women. I mean, that was a great race and so it will only benefit the whole group if we can all train together; they'll make us faster, and hopefully we can we can push them and make them faster. So we will pend some time as a group, get some good training, because it is a good chunk of time, and then we'll go race the World Cup."
Next Steps
The next steps in the 2023 Selection Procedures, now that the NSR racing for these Olympic small boat spots is complete, will be the Selection Camps--plural. The first Camp runs in Chula Vista until May 21. To quote the Procedures themselves, there will be "approximately twenty athletes (sixteen open weight and two to four lightweight rowers) invited to the selection camp. The purpose is to bring the fastest individual athletes together allowing to assemble the best combination of talent. The selected athletes will participate in different boat classes in World Cup II, Varese."
After that World Cup in June (the 16th through the 18th), a second Selection Camp will be run at Mercer Lake, from June 25-July 16. At that point, bigger boats and lineups will become the focus, along with any of Olympic Small boats that might miss the qualification standard at the World Cup.
As a number of the athletes mentioned after the NSR racing, there are many steps left to go, but this is how the path forward is laid out.
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