The 2023 running of the Gold Cup Regatta saw repeat wins by Emma Twigg and Melvin Twellaar in the race for the elite internationals, while Kara Kohler and Clark Dean won the Lotman Challenge for US scullers. The Youth winners in the Hoffman Challenge racing were Grace Moore from Newport Rowing Club and Donovan Moses from V-Sculls Rowing Team.
The regatta kept its open time trial format from last year for the domestic and youth events to encourage participation--the youth men's single attracted 26 challengers this year--while the international field was once again drawn from the top single scullers at the World Championships the past two years. All the finals were run over 750 meters, finishing right in front of the Camden County Boathouse on the Cooper, with cash prizes for all four finalists in the non-youth events. This year, the Gold Cup winner took home $16,000, and the Lotman US Challenge winner $8,000.
Twigg Nets Gold Cup Hat Trick
Emma Twigg now has her name on the Gold Cup three times, a streak that runs back to her first win in 2019--and, of course, she spent her time winning the single at the Tokyo Olympics during the Gold Cup's pandemic hiatus in 2020 and 2021.
Twigg matched up again this year against Karolien Florijn of the Netherlands, who has been winning the single just ahead of her at Worlds in this Paris Quadrennial, but Twigg continues to own the 750 meter format featured in the Gold Cup.
"We need to bring the Olympic distance down, I reckon," joked Twigg afterwards, but also noted that "you learn something every time you do these [races]."
"I'm happy I get to keep coming back to Philly," said Twigg, who has made a habit of stopping off at the Gold Cup each year at this stage in her career. "One of the best things about this sport is these kind of events where you get to mix with athletes who are not part of your team."
Twigg's sentiments about the camaraderie of the Gold Cup competitors were echoed by all the elite internationals--"we trained together, we ate together, like friends," was how Bulgaria's Desislava Angelova put it--and the race, despite the size of the purse on offer, has become as much about those bonds as the chance to win the prize.
"The best part is to be with all the rowers you're competing against all year and really spend a week with them doing fun things and exchanging [ideas]," said Florijn, the now two-time defending World Champion, who took second again this year.
"That's really worth a lot for me, to get to know everybody and then for the next season, when you see each another again, you really know the person."
Florijn came back to Philadelphia this year as part of a larger Dutch contingent, with both the defending Gold Cup winner Twellaar and this year's Dutch single sculler Simon van Dorp, and said it was fun to have more teammates on the trip.
"It's pretty special. Melvin was in the single last year and then Simon is doing so well now, also in the single, and got himself a ticket here."
The USA's Kara Kohler and Angelova also earned their tickets to the Gold Cup final this year by having a strong 2023 in the boat class. They finished fourth and fifth, respectively, in Belgrade, which was Angelova's first A Final at the senior level and a return to form for Kohler, whose last A Final was when she won bronze at Worlds in 2019.
The Bulgarian just edged Kohler for third in the Gold Cup final here, but Kohler was on her third piece of the day, having just turned around from winning the Lotman Challenge--a race she had to time trial her way into to start the day.
"There was a quick turnaround," Kohler said. "I had about 30 minutes, so the cooldown of the Lotman was essentially my warm up for the Gold Cup. I came in, changed unisuits, then went back out and rowed straight to the start."
"I had a good three hour warm up lead on our international friends," she laughed.
Twellaar Takes Two-peat
Melvin Twellaar, the Dutch World Champion in the double, was welcomed back to the Gold Cup, and single sculling, to defend his win from last year. He finished ahead of the three men who topped the Worlds podium in the 1x: silver medalist van Dorp, bronze medalist Thomas Mackintosh of New Zealand and the World Champ, Ollie Zeidler of Germany, who finished in that order.
While Twellaar spent the 2023 season back in the double with his Olympic silver medal boatmate Stefan Broenink, he was thrilled to have the chance to come back to the US and race the single again for the Gold Cup.
"I really love this boat class and it was a nice, short trip into the single again," he said. "It's really nice to feel like you've still got the magic, but the main focus is on the double for this [next] year."
"It's a nice extra," Twellaar added, about the invitation to race the Gold Cup. "It makes the start of the season a bit easier. It motivates you a lot, and now, it's back to training and then Paris."
Twellaar was not the only sculler to note that this October racing really forms part of the upcoming season, rather than a part of the 2023 campaign.
"It's always the kickoff of my season," said Zeidler. "It's fun to meet with the other single scullers, not at a regatta, but spending a week with them going out and having some fun. It's definitely worth the trip."
"For the beginning of the season, I think it's good," noted the three-time World Champion about racing the shorter, sprint distance, but he did add: "I think I'm made for 2k."
Both van Dorp and New Zealand's Mackintosh were new to the Gold Cup, having just joined the the single scullers fraternity this year. Before facing off in the 1x in Belgrade, they had raced each other in the men's eight in Tokyo, where Mackintosh won gold in the Kiwi eight, before van Dorp moved into the Dutch quad, winning European gold and silver and then going into the single for Worlds--and another silver--this year.
"Having a unique race, where it is already an honor to compete, is quite cool," said van Dorp. "It's fun to have a different type of race. The level was still quite high, and it was really close, which was exciting."
Mackintosh agreed on the uniqueness of the Gold Cup sprint format.
"We're very accustomed to 2k racing, but this was a fast race that was over within a flash, "he said. "It's always nice just to test yourself against these guys again. The single scullers here are the best in the biz, so it's always good to compare myself against how they're going."
"We often say there's a lot of camaraderie in the eight, because you've got your teammates, but I'm starting to get the single sculler camaraderie. While we're all fierce competitors against each other, we're also great friends and I'm starting to understand that notion."
Lotman Wins for Tokyo Teammates Kohler and Dean
A pair of Tokyo Olympians and current US National Teamers won the Lotman Challenge for US scullers: Kara Kohler and Clark Dean.
Kohler took care of her win--just before her quick turnaround for her shot at the Gold Cup--with a strong piece over three teammates from the 2023 Worlds team for the USA. Maggie Fellows, the 2021 Head Of The Charles winner and senior US team athlete out of the 2022 quad, mounted the strongest charge down the track, within a second of Kohler. In third was Lauren O'Connor, last year's Lotman winner who went on to make the US team in the quad this year, and Michelle Sechser, the US Olympian who has won two silvers in the LW2x this quadrennial, took fourth.
"It's a very different format than we usually see," Kohler said about doing the multiple short pieces on the day instead of a full 2k. "I did little bit of sprint work this week and then we had fast conditions today, so I was really excited to push the envelope and see how fast I could go and how long I could hold on to it."
"You don't really have a whole lot of expectations or know exactly how to break up the piece. There's not really a settle or a lengthen phase in a 750, and you see some really fast speeds."
The men's Lotman race went to Clark Dean, who got out ahead of the 2023 US men's single sculler Finn Putnam, the just-returned Pan Am silver medal-winning sculler Jacob Plihal, and US quad sculler Dominique Williams.
Dean clearly remembers a few small boat tricks from his sculling days when he was winning World U19 titles before switching to sweep rowing for college and the Tokyo Olympics. Coming off a fourth place finish at the Head Of The Charles just behind Putnam, Dean said he has been spending a lot of time back in the single after racing the eight in Belgrade.
"Since right after Worlds, it's been mostly the single and erging," Dean said. "I've been in Boston, working part time and I've rowed the pair here and there, but it's basically just been the single. It's been a short but pretty fun campaign in it. It definitely feels a bit like I'm picking up where I left off and it's been good getting back out in the single."
With the Paris Games on the horizon and the chance to make his second Olympic Team, Dean said he is staying flexible when it comes to what boat class he might row next summer, and that rowing the single has just been part of his training.
"It will be whatever USRowing tells me to do," he said. "The goal is the same: showing up in the best shape, and be good at sweep, good at sculling, and then do whatever the high performance director and the coaches think will give boats the best chance of medaling."
Moore and Moses Win Hoffman Challenge
The two wins in the Hoffman Challenge for youth scullers played out very differently: Grace Moore, the 2023 Stotesbury singles champ, won the women's race emphatically right off the start, while the men's race became a tight duel that Donovan Moses took in the closing strokes over his summertime teammate at V-Sculls, Reed Eddy, who was racing here for his school team, Brunswick.
"I was at 42 or 44 off the start, which got me out," said Moore. "I held that for a little while and then I went down to like a 39 or 40. That got me the lead that I needed and then it was just keeping that same distance from the other girls."
"Sometimes I need a race plan, but today I just thought, 'I'm going to hammer it out.'"
In the Men's race, Moses, a U17 sculler from V-Sculls who won a silver medal at Youth Nationals in the U17 double last year, got into a great battle with his friend and sometime training partner, Eddy.
"We both had a good start and we pulled ahead of the other guys, but I saw Reed gaining on me and I got a bit scared, said Moses. "But in the last 250, I looked to my side and I saw I could win, so I pushed it. There was a moment when I thought, I could win this, and I threw everything into finishing the race."
Moses did say it was a bit of an advantage having a training partner in the race.
"It probably calmed my nerves a little bit because I had somebody familiar there with me, I wasn't just there alone."
Notes From The Course
Blackwall-Duling Challenge Will Return in '24 - While there were no para races at this year's Gold Cup Regatta, that event--The Blackwall-Duling Challenge--is set to return next year with a new approach to attract more para athletes, potentially including internationals like the other races. Instead this year, the para prize money was awarded directly to two US athletes who competed at Worlds: Andrew Mangan, the PR1 Men’s 1x, and Maddy Eberhard, bow of the US PR2 mixed 2x--both of who raced in last year's Blackwall-Duling Challenge.
Cooper Geese Strike Again - the geese on the Cooper are very much up to their old tricks on regatta day. This time instead of the Texas 2V, as it was at NCAAs, it was Dominique Williams who ran into 'fowl trouble' in the final of the Lotman Challenge, and you can see his quick recovery on the video here.
Favorite Course...besides the Cooper? During the Q&A with the elite athletes at the end of the program, one junior rower asked them about their favorite place to row, adding, naturally, "besides the Cooper." That got a few chuckles, and led to some funny answers as the internationals played along, keeping the Cooper high on lists that included Bled, Lucerne, and Aiguebelette.
Happy Birthday - it's not every day that an Olympic Champ and Gold Cup winner leads a room in singing Happy Birthday, but that is the kind of family the Gold Cup Regatta has built over the years, and it was indeed Craig Hoffman's birthday, so everyone was happy to join Emma Twigg in song.
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