The past two years have been nothing less than a whirlwind for lightweight scullers Sophia Luwis and Audrey Boersen. But as they prepare to defend their championship in the Women's Champ Doubles at this year's Head of the Charles, they're setting aside the pressure and stress, at least for the moment, and rowing again for the simple joy of the water.
Both Luwis, 27, and Boersen, 26, were injured in a car accident in the lead-up to the 2022 World Championships, Luwis seriously so; she was hospitalized for weeks. But in 2023, one year after the accident, they were back in the boat for at the World Championships. Boersen served as an alternate and won the single in the spares, while Luwis finished third in the lightweight single.
Next up was the Head of the Charles, where they won the Champ Doubles race by more than a minute. This year saw both make the A Final in the lightweight singles at World Cup II in Lucerne in May. Next, Luwis was off to Paris as the lightweight alternate for Team USA while Boersen finished 8th in the lightweight single at the World Championships in St. Catherine's.
After Worlds and the Olympics, they both exhaled, which meant their defense of their Head of the Charles championship almost didn't happen.
Deciding to race again in the fall wasn't an easy choice for Boersen and Luwis. But as the entry deadline approached, Boersen was the first to consider it, albeit reluctantly.
"I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it [HOCR], especially because Worlds were so much later than the Games. I didn't want the deadline of like, you're going to do Head of the Charles, which means you have to be training at a certain point," Boersen admitted.
Luwis, on the other hand, was more than reluctant; she was downright averse.
"I was like, absolutely not. I'm not doing it," Luwis recalled. "Then she texts me three weeks ago and she's like, 'So how do you feel about doing the Charles?' I told her, 'The timeline to put in an entry is coming up, so if you want it and find another person to go with, go for it. No hard feelings.' So she submitted the entry."
But sure enough, the two couldn't stay apart for long. Shortly after submitting the entry for the double, Boersen reached out to Luwis again, asking her to reconsider. After a bit of convincing, Luwis begrudgingly obliged.
"It was something like, 'I definitely could still find somebody else if you really, really don't want to do it, but I just want to get in the boat with you. Will you do it?'" Luwis recounted. "I was like, 'If you find a boat, if you do all the legwork, I will show up and I will sit in the boat.'"
Like most elite athletes coming down after a huge event like the Olympics or Worlds, Boersen and Luwis have spent the last weeks mixing low intensity work with lots of rest.
"The first priority after Worlds was lots of rest and recovery," said Boersen, who's been training with the ARION group in Saratoga in recent weeks. "It's a kind of an ease-back-into-it situation. I'll see what I can get done this fall, but for the most part, right now for me personally, it's about having fun with rowing again. It got really intense in the past two years so I have to remember that the sport is fun, and I do love to do it. It's not just a job. That's my goal for the fall."
Luwis also has a new focus on rest and recovery, but after Paris, she decided to take time away from the sport entirely.
"The last two years have been pretty intense, especially after the accident. It's just been head down, going for this goal of recovering and making it to the Olympics, and that took a lot out of me," Luwis explained. "I didn't know if I was done with rowing or elite athletics forever, but I knew I wanted a good chunk of time to not compete."
Her return to the sport came when she joined the coaching staff of Stanford University lightweight rowing in mid-September, where her level of personal training is far lower.
"I drove out here [to Stanford] and I didn't touch a boat for over a month and a half," Luwis said. "I've been slowly starting to add back in some lifting, some cardio, some activity. I've been out in a single once or twice now. It's about making sure when I do activity, I do it only because I want to and I'm getting joy out of it, not because I have to."
Adapting to the schedule has been a challenge for Boersen too, who found it difficult to accept being away from the sport after years of an intense performance regime.
"I'd been on such a strict schedule. As a lightweight, there was eating and weigh-ins, and then there was training and cross-training, and 'when do I have to get to sleep?' And 'when can I do all of these different things?' So the biggest struggle for me was stepping back and letting it be okay that I didn't have a routine to go into, and letting myself have time to rest," Boersen explained. "There's the big mental shift of coming from racing and being at a peak, and then having to come immediately down, and that's hard."
When they agreed to return to the Head of the Charles, they agreed it would be different from their many past races together. The stress of training to compete at the highest level, to qualify for the next big race, to represent their country, had been lifted. They would be racing simply for the love of the sport. Boersen said she wouldn't have it any other way.
"If I find somebody else, they might perform really well and want to go out and win," she said. And I honestly want to go fast and have fun, but I'm not attached to the, 'We have to go as fast as possible right now.' I'm more attached to the, 'Can I get in a boat with my best friend and can we go have fun, even when she's across the country from me?' Turns out we can."
Both athletes are looking forward to the race. Luwis, having fully come around to the idea of racing, is especially excited and still holds onto her competitive spirit.
"I'm really looking forward to getting in that boat and having it click right away like it usually does," Luwis said. "Maybe this is the competitor in me, but it's so fun and so satisfying to get out there and see everybody so nervous and like shaking in their boots, heads whipping around, making sure their points all right, making sure they're all ready to go. And then you're just there having a good time, feeling loose, feeling fresh. It's doubly awesome when you can back that up with winning speed. But even if we don't have that, guaranteed we'll be out there seeing some people nervous and all that, and we're just ready to rip it."
Rip it they will have to, for the field behind them is a formidable one.
Luwis and Boersen will start at Bow #1 as defending champions. Right behind them will be the 2024 Olympic bronze-medal double from Great Britain, Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne and Rebecca Wilde.
Bow #3 is also an Olympic lineup, featuring fellow lightweights Margaret Cremen and Aoife Casey who rowed for Ireland in the Lightweight Double in both Tokyo and Paris. Following up at Bow #4 is another 2020 and 2024 Olympic Lightweight Double, Canadians Jenny Casson and Jill Moffatt.
Other Olympians in the field include Italians Alice Gnatta and Elisa Mondelli at Bow #5, both from the 6th place Women's Eight in Paris, and Brit Lola Anderson and Northern Irishwoman Hannah Scott at Bow #6, who won 2024 gold in the GB Women's Quad.
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