The first public round of racing for the athletes vying for spots at the Paris Games at the Winter Speed Order saw Maggie Fellows and Sorin Koszyk winning in the singles, Molly Bruggeman and Regina Salmons taking the women’s pair, and Liam Corrigan and Michael Grady topping the field in the men’s pair.

Also in play in the women’s single field was another round of throwing-down amongst the top lightweight women, who all raced in the open single event. The lightweights, of course, are all gunning for one of the two seats in the last-ever LW2x event at the Olympic level.

This weekend Molly Reckford put down a marker or two ahead of selection camp. Reckford, who did not make the LW2x in the final round of selection last season after two years and a Worlds silver in the crew with Michelle Sechser, won the W1x time trial and then took third in the A Final behind Fellows and Sophia Vitas, who won bronze in the W2x at Worlds last year.

Sechser, who also made the A Final amidst the openweights, took fifth, while her 2023 LW2x partner Mary Jones Nabel raced to second in the B Final, just behind another lightie aiming to be in the mix, Audrianna Boerson.

Molly Reckford in Thursday's time trial

That B Final was such a tight finish that the top five scullers all appear in the photo finish image that you can see here, separated by just 1.2 seconds.

While no actual Olympic seats were up for grabs in this Speed Order, the top three finishers in each event earned automatic invites to Selection Camp. In addition, many of the discretionary invitations to round out the 48 men and 48 women at the camp will be based on the order of finish here, along with erg testing and prior years’ results.

You can read more on how that camp works, and the path ahead for each Olympic boat class in row2k's February update on Olympic Selection.

The win in the single for Maggie Fellows, her first-ever at a Speed Order or Selection Regatta, is her best result since winning the Head of the Charles in 2021.

Maggie Fellows in Thursday's time trial

After the racing, Fellows may also have summed up everyone's state of mind at this point in the process the best:

"It was exciting to line up with such a strong field of women to kick off Olympic Selection. Today is another step in the process and there is lots more to come in the next few weeks."

With nothing settled or written in stone even with these Speed Order results, we asked some of the winners how they will approach those next steps, and what goes into preparing for selection, even with a good result under their belts.

Sorin Koszyk, who has now won the Winter Speed Order in the men's single two years in a row, answered for himself and Ben Davison, his double partner. Davison took second and, like Koszyk, went under 6:50 in the process: 6:49.7 to Koszyk’s 6:47.2.

Sorin Koszyk eyeing the finish on Saturday

"We had a pretty good lead up to this race. We figured a lot of stuff out and identified what the rhythm should feel like and what good speed is, so then it's not so reliant on looking at your splits. You just know, okay, if it feels like this, that means we're moving well. I think that's helpful and so if we can find that, in any conditions, we know exactly what to shoot for and we've established how we want to move the boat which is good."

Heading into selection requires more of the same, said Koszyk.

"For us, it's about finding that speed, that feel, and being able to just make that automatic no matter what the conditions are. Then just be really consistent. If it's good conditions, you're putting up like 97 or 98 percent of the Gold Medal standard, any day of the week. And being able to reproduce that over like a week-long race schedule. I think the biggest thing. At Worlds and [the Olympics], you're racing in the double four to five times, so you need to be like able to hit a really high standard consistently.

"It's just good to see that we're moving the small boats well, and we're able to reproduce a high percentage time four times in a row with no rest days. For me and Ben, we talked about how if we're both going sub 6:50 in the single, that's a really good sign."

For Regina Salmons, whose win in the pair with Molly Bruggeman was a repeat of their performance at the Fall Speed Order, the next steps involve faith in the coaches and the depth of the team.

Molly Bruggeman, stroke, and Regina Salmons taking the A Final win

"I have such a deep trust in Jessie Foglia and Josy Verdonkschot, knowing that whatever the next steps may be they have the best interests of the team at heart and will put us on the best trajectory possible," said Salmons, who sat six seat in the women's eight which won silver last year in Belgrade.

"From our end as athletes, I personally try to take it one day at a time to make sure that every day is continuing that momentum and whatever that trajectory ends up being.

"I'm just so in awe of all of our teammates," Salmons added. "It's such a deep team and we've just been like going out and like trading punches the last three weeks here in Florida. Everyone is so fast and it's absolutely awesome to be out here with everybody and have such a deep team. Even in the B final and the C final, everybody was going incredibly fast today."

[and Salmons is absolutely right: the A final for both the women's and men's pair saw all six boats at 95% of the Competitive Standard Time (CST) or better, whew]

Stroke seat Molly Bruggeman, who puts down "a sick rhythm" according to Salmons, said that she approaches the next phase of selection with confidence in the group.

"We're looking forward to making a really fast eight and four, said Bruggeman, who was bow of the US four that took fourth and qualified for the Olympics. "I think we're going to have two really fast combinations, and today after crossing the finish line, it was honestly cool to be able to look around and know that these are the people I'm going to be racing with this summer."

Bruggeman and Salmons racing the time trial to start the weekend

"We have two weeks before the start of camp," Bruggeman continued, "and getting back into the big boats is going to be a transition again: getting familiar with that feeling, because it's different than a pair, and to hearing a coxswain's voice for the first time in a while.

"Whether or not Regina and I are together [in the same boat], I have confidence that we're going to have the same mentality of just getting a little bit better every day and getting used to being in that lineup. But, whatever happens I'm really proud of what we've accomplished together, and especially coming from the fall speed order and having had a good performance there, but then having another step up in our performance here, having a really fast time, one of our fastest times in the pair."

Liam Corrigan, whose partnership with Michael Grady has proved to be the fastest US men's pair for two years running now, says that going into selection with a strong result makes a difference

"As much as you can do seat racing, if you have the best public result, it certainly goes a long way, if nothing else, for going into the seat racing.

Liam Corrigan, stroke, and Michael Grady after their win

"Ultimately, the decision making is up to Josy Verdonkschot, primarily," Corrigan added, "but personally the way I approach it is you just want to win everything you can, so that when you're selecting and when you're training in the boat, no one has any doubts that they want to be with you, that you're the guy who is the fastest. That's the mentality I try to approach it with."

Corrigan and Grady turned their pair's success at last year's Speed Order and Selection regatta into a Worlds silver and World Cup bronze in the four, and Grady says their sights are set on hitting that same level of performance again, after a few weeks to reset themselves.

"I'm excited to get a little bit of a break from racing here. This next week, I'll try to play some golf and settle down a little bit to get mentally ready for some selection," said Grady.

"I'm excited to get a good training block in and push the fitness again, like we were doing back in Colorado [at altitude camp], ahead of this next step in the procedure. Then from there, hopefully everything goes well and then we can just look forward to what we were doing last summer. It was not always comfortable, not always fun, but it was pushing ourselves to that level [of getting a medal.]"

The next steps towards picking the boats for Paris all happen in the coming six weeks, with the Selection Camp ending on March 24th and the Olympic Trials which will run from April 2-7.

The selection camp will name five boats already qualified for Paris--the W2x, LW2x, W4-, M4-, and W8+--as well as a W4x and M4x that will race the Olympic Trials and a M8+ that will advance directly to the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta (FOQR) in Lucerne, SUI on May 19-21.

The Olympic Trials will also take place in Sarasota, where the winners in the W1x, W2-, and M2- will be nominated to the Olympic team since the USA qualified those events at the 2023 World Championships. The winners of the non-qualified events--the M1x, M2x, LM2x, W4x, and M4x--will then need to race at the FOQR and finish in the top two there to qualify for Paris.

Notes from the Course

Soft Rock Soundtrack - spectators, and row2k photographers, at the Finish Tower were subjected to an endless stream of soft rock hits during the semi-finals on Friday. Who doesn’t love a little England Dan and John Ford Coley with their racing?

Catching the Alternate Broadcast - with no official live-stream of arguably the best and most consequential racing in the country so far this year, a select group of hard-core rowing geeks and parents gratefully found their way to the @marinatraubyoga Instagram feed. There they found Marina Traub and Matt Muffleman providing witty and insightful commentary--along with some understandably shaky iPhone video--from their bikes. One viewer dubbed it "The Manningcast of Rowing"--and here's hoping it catches on so we can see more great racing as it happens.

The Insta-casters at work.

Watch and Learn - With Saturday's finals coming down the course just as the high schoolers from 28 teams were arriving--and in some cases launching--for the two-day American Youth Cup 1 that followed hard on the heels of the Speed Order, it was a neat chance for the younger generation, like this crew from Winter Park, to see some elite racing up close--and for row2k to go straight from shooting Olympians in small boats to youth eights.

You go, girl! - Alina Hagstrom, who got just 5 days to practice in a single this week after a late entry switch but made the C Final, got a huge shoutout in our interview with Molly Bruggeman and Regina Salmons for "crushing it" and rowing a 7:40. Hagstrom hadn’t been in a single since racing one at at the Fall Speed Order.

And, yep, the Circus... - the annual appearance of Circus Sarasota on the island, with its massive tent, made for some good memes over the weekend, naturally. Can't beat a good "circus is in town" joke during a regatta...

...at least not until after racing.