John Graves has raced in enough challenging conditions, and at enough National Selection Regattas on Mercer Lake, to understand that weather can turn a well thought out race plan into a minute-to-minute scramble.
But even with all that experience, the weather system that sat on the West Windsor, NJ, venue this week, made the first National Selection Regatta of 2018 unforgettable, and not in the best way. "It was a very crazy week," said Graves Thursday morning after winning the men's single.
"It was an abnormal week for starters," Graves said. "I've done a few NSRs, and at this point, this was one of the most challenging, just from a standpoint of being able to prepare for the final.
From the first day of racing in the Tuesday morning time trials of the four event, all singles regatta, conditions on Mercer Lake were challenging as high winds blew the course into a white-capped mess. Still, all but one of the 113 singles entered in the men's and women's open single NSR event and the men's and women's lightweight single Speed Order, made it down the course.
Conditions like that don’t often persist for an entire week, but these did and the race schedule was juggled and condensed and altered until all A-finals originally scheduled for Friday morning were run Thursday morning instead.
"That was tough because you didn't really get a chance to find a rhythm earlier in the week, because the conditions were so bad, and especially because of the condensed schedule. It forced all of us to quickly ramp up into the final today," Graves said.
"This morning, it was a pretty direct and strong head wind. It seemed pretty fair though. It was going straight down the course. I don’t think there was any difference in the lanes, but I definitely lightened up my rig a little bit because the head wind really picked up and I was focused on just trying to get into a rhythm early in the piece, knowing that it was going to be a longer race. I knew I would need to have a really good second thousand," he said.
Being that this was the first official event in the US national team selection process, the winners of the men's and women's open singles were important in that winning athletes gain the opportunity to race at a World Cup, and with a top performance, can claim a spot in the single on the US team that will compete in the 2018 World Rowing Championship in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
But the racing also had implications for the Herb Lotman United States Rowing Challenge and the money purse that goes to the US men's and women's scullers who earn the most points in the three-race challenge.
The NSR was the first leg of the three stages and the top eight men's and women's open single scullers and the top two lightweights in the men's and women's events earn points toward the available money, and are advanced into the next round. The second round is held as part of the Head of the Charles Regatta. The final event takes place at the Head of the Schuylkill.
Seeding into the Head of the Charles for the challenge is done based on overall times from the NSR racing. To ensure that the results are as fair as possible, and considering that conditions can change from one race to the next in any regatta, all four A-finals were run at the top of the Thursday morning schedule.
In addition to Graves taking the men's event, 2012 Olympic Bronze medalist Kara Kohler, rowing as a US Princeton Training Center athlete, won the women's open. Penn AC's Jasper Liu won the lightweight men's title while Cambridge Boat Club's Mary Jones Nabel won the women's lightweight single.
"The race conditions were pretty challenging all week, and the changing and rescheduling of the progression was really a test of being adaptable and figuring out how to perform in the moment," said Nabel.
"Even though it was a challenging week, we ended up having some great racing last night and this morning and I'm very happy with my races. I put in a lot of hard work over the winter and I was glad to have a chance to show what I've been doing."
Nabel said she was also happy to have had the lightweights included in the Lotman Challenge results.
"I'm really excited to have the lightweights included, looking at last year's Head of the Charles and the Head of the Schuylkill, I felt I could have been competitive," she said. "And having a chance to get into the Lotman Challenge here at the NSR and having the heavyweight singles run back to back to get a look and a comparison between the two fields makes it interesting to see how things stack up," she said.
Graves said he has not yet decided which World Cup he will compete in, but said he is definitely planning to race the single internationally. He said he still hopes to race the men's double sculls this summer with Ben Davison. The pair represented the US at the 2017 World Championships and they have tentative plans to attempt to do it again this year.
But because Davison is still a junior rowing at the University of Washington, the plans for the double are not yet sorted out. For now, Graves is certain he wants to race the single in World Cup competition and to continue racing for the Lotman Challenge purse.
"I have a long way to go in that," he said. "But it was good to get that one under my belt."
As for rowing internationally in the single, Graves said: "It's always really, really helpful to go match up against the top international scullers. But I have a lot to figure out with Ben as far as scheduling goes. Hopefully in the next couple of week, I will be able to figure out my plans. But hopefully I'll be able to go race the world cup and still do the double."
Full results from the week can be found here.
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