Six two-person events--the Men's & Women's Pairs, Doubles, and Lightweight Doubles--got their 2022 World Champs team qualification cycle underway today at USRowing's National Selection Regatta 2 on Mercer Lake. The winners of each event will be given the opportunity to compete at the World Cup II regatta in Poznan, Poland from June 4-6, and a top six finish (or top 50% if less than 12 boats are entered in the event) would allow those crews to claim selection to the 2022 US National team.
Lightweight Doubles
Somewhat surprisingly, both Lightweight Doubles events only had one entry each, allowing the "incumbent" crews of Molly Reckford & Michelle Sechser, and Jasper Liu and Zach Heese to qualify with a row-over.
For Heese and Liu, who also entered the Open Double, where they finished fourth in the time trial, this week is all about building competitiveness.
"We're really focused on this week first, so we want to do as well as we can in the heavyweight double event, and a good result here getting close or even winning would be fantastic," said Liu. "Our first big test will be the World Cup, with a lot of selection implications on that one and also funding."
"As the entry deadline neared, we saw that there weren't going to be any other entries in the double and we knew we wanted to get more racing in this week," said Liu. "This will be a great way for us to race some boats that are faster than us and have that experience heading into the summer."
Liu expressed some surprise at racing a selection event unopposed.
"I just think that the lightweight field is not super deep right now. There are some guys in Boston that are focusing on the quads that stayed in Boston instead of coming to race here. There just aren't too many people training at this level right now."
As far as the best part of the week, Liu was clear that he and Heese were looking forward to a week of racing and eating. "We are very much looking forward to that and that's honestly going to be pretty weird showing up to a race and not having to weigh in!"
For Molly Reckford and Michelle Sechser, they had the shortest regatta of all of the competitors, rowing over the course and claiming the berth in June's World Cup.
"I had seen on regattacentral that we would be unopposed, which is certainly less fun than racing a big field," said Reckford. "But we knew before today that it would happen so I wasn't surprised."
"Now we will just keep training. We went back to 'base' when we saw that there were no other entries, so we'll keep training here in Princeton and begin to ramp up for the World Cup."
Open Doubles
Both of the winners of the NSR 1 Single Sculls trial were in action in the open doubles today. Lightweights Sophia Luwis and Audrianna Boerson finished first in the women's Open Double time trial, just ahead of Texas' Kara Kohler, who won the single in February, and Sophia Vitas.
"Sophia and I have worked hard these past few weeks to come together as a double, and it’s amazing to see the pay off of weeks of training," said Boerson after the race. "For time trials we wanted to be able to execute our race plan and shake out those race days nerves in a productive manner. We accomplished what we set out to do, and the results of this race were the byproduct of that."
For Boerson and Luwis, skipping the lightweight double event made the most sense in the context of their training this year.
"We figured that the open double would allow us the opportunity to get in more races and more experience going down the course," she said. "The field is also so competitive and deep with a small margin of error, and we thought that this environment would allow us to compete with high stakes and push us more than competing in the lightweight event right now. We do have our eye on lightweight events down the road, mainly the lightweight 4x for this year."
The Texas Rowing Center combo of Kevin Cardno and Jonathan Kirkegaard took first place on the men's side, just ahead of the California Rowing Club entry of Ben Davison, the men's singles winner in February, who raced alongside Chris Carlson.
Both Kohler and Davison have already locked up qualification for the World Cup in the Singles, and can opt to use those berths if they desired. As Davison explained in February, he will be looking for the best possible situation for himself and his teammates.
In the women's double, which was the only event big enough to require a repechage round, the margin between finishing top 6 and going direct to semi and the reps was 0.28 seconds.
The 6 boats advancing direct to semi in the women's double represent an almost full sweep of the many training camps and clubs in this new era: Texas, ARION, Cambridge BC, Green Racing Project, with an Unaffiliated/Whitemarsh composite tossed in for good measure. All PTC athletes are in the Women’s Pair.
Open Pairs
The first heavyweight men's sweep selection event of '22 brought out quite a few Tokyo team members, with Olympians Justin Best (M8+) and Michael Grady (M4-) winning the time trial.
"It was just a great time," said Grady after the race. "It's always fun to be able to line up for a race again, have some fine tuning capabilities just to kind of get the jitters out of that first one. This was just a chance to go down the track and we get two more of those."
"We have some things to figure out," added his partner Justin Best. "Both Grady and I felt like there were some aspects throughout the piece we can improve on. We are still excited for the semis and hopefully that will put us in a qualification spot to get to the final on Friday. It's exciting to get back to a buoyed course and be able to get some side by side racing in."
Tokyo women's four rowers Claire Collins and Maddie Wanamaker took the women's pair.
"We just focused on staying in our boat, staying long, and executing our race plan," said Collins. "There were good steps made today and we will look to keep improving as the week goes on."
"Mercer has been quiet this year, with only 14 of us training in Princeton, so it's exciting to have everyone back in town for racing," added Wanamaker. "It was a beautiful morning to shake off the dust and start the 2024 campaign."
Wanamaker and Collins finished ahead of PTC teammates Kelsey Reelick and Allyson Baker, and their Tokyo W8+ teammates Jess Thoeness and Charlotte Buck.
In the women's double, racing continues tomorrow in the reps. For the Men's and Women's Pair and Men's Double, the next racing is the semifinals on Thursday.
Notes from the Course
The shore along the course was buzzing with the fact that, less than 80' before the racing, there was no sign of results or a final schedule, and then a link that showed the 8am race as active at 7am. All of rowing needs to get our act together with respect to representing our sport and getting information out; we're doing what we can here, let's do it people!
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