Senior Trials had a very different feel to it this year, and you can credit USRowing's switch to a single final format for the finality and purpose of the finals this year. Under the old "best 2 out of 3" format, the second day of finals could feel pretty definite, but there was always the chance that a close finish from the first day could turn in favor of a second winner and send the whole thing to a third day. USRowing made the switch after looking at the historical results and, judging that the vast majority of Final 1 winners usually prevail even under the three day format, they made the change in this year's procedures. Currently, only the Junior team still uses a three-final selection procedure: all the U23, Senior and Pan Am crews are using the one final approach. With a successful trials here and a full set of decisive winners, it is likely that this one-shot format is here to stay.
There were some close races, of course, although none went down to a true photo-finish, but there still had to be a few crews ruing the loss of a second crack at the opposition. That said, the format forced the winners to, simply, win -- and rewarded the crews that got it right on the day. Seems like a pretty good criteria for selecting crews to compete at the highest level, even if it made for a few brutally final outcomes.
Format change or no, the most notable story at these trials came from the NSR winners in the Men's Pair, Women's Single, and Light Men's Double: though all three struggled to place high enough on the World Cup circuit to avoid coming back to race Trials, all emerged today to "keep" their spot on the team -- a testament to the will and talent in these boats, but also a validation of the NSR process, which gives the small boat crews time and incentive to train and race together.
The Men's pair of Tom Peszek and Justin Stangel got the hardest test, forced to row back from a good two to three length deficit opened up by Ryan Monaghan and Silas Stafford in the early going. Stafford raced last year's Worlds in the USA 4-, the priority boat of late, and Monaghan stroked the Worlds pair, so this was a serious challenge, but by the 1250, Peszek and Stangel had worked back through and had things in hand. At the line, though, you could hear the anguish from the second place pair as they finished, having gambled on that early effort and fallen short in the only shot they would get.
In the Women's single, Gevvie Stone made good on her NSR win back in April and held on to her spot in the 1x. Last year, Stone took the NSR 1 win too, but just missed a spot on the Worlds team when 2008 Olympian Lindsey Meyer, fresh of a U23 bronze, forced a third final which she won by just eight-tenths of a second to end Stone's season. This year, Stones biggest challenge in the final came not from Meyer, who took third, but from Meyer's 2008 Beijing boatmate, Margot Shumway. Shumway, who finished only sixth at the NSR this spring but went on to win Elite Nationals, made up a lot of ground on Stone since April. Today, she pushed Stone hard into the final 500, but Stone had the more decisive final gear--and this year, of course, the one win was all she needed to confirm herself as the US single sculler.
The LM2x, Brian de Regt and Jon Winter, emerged to take the berth they'd been chasing since NSRs as well, but not after another tussle with a field of contenders that has been getting stronger as the Olympic year approaches. de Regt and Jon Winter, the 2010 USA LM2x, won the NSRs handily, but came home from their World Cup race in Munich to find some stiffer competition in the form of the recently un-retired 2008 Olympian Tom Paradiso and his partner Bob Duff. At Elite Nationals, Paradiso and Duff came just a length short of an upset, but de Regt and Winter were able to hold them to roughly that same margin here to seal up their 2011 spot.
Olympian Paradiso's comeback was not the only one to fall short: both Jamie Koven and Greg Ruckman went home empty-handed, but not before pressing younger competitors right to the line.
In the M2x, Koven, who retired after Sydney games in 2000, saw his bid for Olympics number three take another disappointing detour here this morning. Koven and his partner, 2008 Olympian Wes Piermarini, were in the USA quad as recently as the Lucerne World Cup, but the lineup changes that brought the USA double of Glenn Ochal and Will Miller into the quad thrust Koven and Piermarini into the double.
In the M2x final, the duo got an early lead, but paid a high price and could not hold off Peter and Thomas Graves, who have been training at Craftsbury since graduating from Trinity and racing together all spring. At NSR 2, less than four seconds separated these two doubles, and today it was the Graves brothers seizing the opportunity with a late challenge that Koven and Piermarini could not answer in time. The Graves brothers last raced at Worlds in 2009, also in the double, and raced at Henley Royal this year, so they have some good international experience to bring to bear. At Henley, they bowed out to the Chinese crew by just 2 1/4 lengths, and the Chinese fell by a similar margin just a day later to GBR's Bateman and Wells.
Ruckman's go at the LM1x would end with a similar result--second, just--but he got there by patiently grinding his way through the field to gobble up nearly all of the huge margin put up by Andrew Campbell of the Cambridge Boat Club. Campbell, of course, just took bronze at the U23 Worlds, and his maturity showed here and Ruckman, Olympian in 2000 and 2004, gave him all he could handle in the final quarter of the race. Both scullers are Harvard men, and this fun fact gives a good sense of Ruckman's staying power: Campbell just finished his freshmen year as a member of the class of 2014, while Ruckman got his sheepskin in 1995, making him a freshman just a year or so before Campbell was born.
Campbell has had quite the summer so far, and looks both eager and ready to continue his odyssey in the single. In addition to his U23 bronze this year, he won a Junior Worlds bronze last year, in heavyweight 1x, and has just made his fourth National Team, having gotten started in the U23 LM2x as a junior in high school in 2009. His first trip to Senior Worlds will be a taste of a whole other level, of course, but his competition in the U23 final--France's Jeremie Azou and Greece's Panagiotis Magdanis--both came into that race with Senior Worlds experience, so Mr. Campbell has indeed been racing at a high level already.
The light women's single was taken easily by Ursula Grobler, who outlasted 2008 Olympian Jen Goldsack, her closest competitor. Grobler will be racing the single for the first time at Senior Worlds, having famously passed on racing the single last year along with the double and quad in Karapiro as part of her attempt to win three golds. Last year the focus stayed on the bigger boats, but she has set her sights on the single alone for Bled. The Olympic event in her weight class is, of course, the double, so that is the real prize for next year, but that event was not open to trial: Julie Nichols and Kristen Hedstrom, first and second in the light single at NSR 1, went on to win the light double at NSR 2 and locked up their claim on the double for this year with the first of their three LW2x medals on the World Cup circuit.
The vaunted US women's sweep squad came to trials in two events, the pair and straight four, and the depth of Tom Terhaar's program is perhaps best illustrated by the pair he sent to these trials. Kady Glessner and Caryn Davies won the trial handily, and why not? Between the two of them, they have stroked the last five
World and Olympic champion eights for the USA, to say nothing of having collected plenty of other hardware along the way. This year, a new schedule at Worlds made doubling the pair into the eight just a bit tighter than in the past, so these two came to the pair after missing out on selection for the big boat.
The Women's four started out as a three boat trial, with two crews entered from the Princeton Training Center group. One of these withdrew before the final--perhaps having something to do with the fact that all four rowers in that blazing boat have already been named to the women's eight--but the "second" PTC crew won the two boat final easily over a crew from the development group training in Oklahoma City. The W4 will be the third international boat of the season for Kara Kohler, who won Henley in the quad and Lucerne in the eight, before being selected for this lineup along with Sara Zelenka, Emily Regan, and Sarah Hendershot.
The single final opened the door for crews to take charge right from the gun, which was the script for both light quads. The light women's composite quad from OKC, Pocock, and Riverside led Vesper throughout to qualify four first time senior teamers, while the LM4x was dominated by a smooth composite quad from GMS, Malta, and Penn AC. That quad is coached by Malvern Prep's Craig Hoffman, who knows a thing or two about fast quads, and has two of his assistant coaches from Malvern aboard--perhaps explaining why they raced in matching Malvern unis.
Winner take all also meant, of course, that results of the "race for lanes" and the earlier rounds were out the window, as in the LM2-, where the Dartmouth/Hanover TC pair overturned what had been a clear advantage for the Riverside's "Phils." The Riverside duo, just back from the U23 Worlds, looked very good on Tuesday, but today the Hanover pair--Kyle Lafferty and, for good measure, another Phil: Phillip Oertle-- jumped out to and ran away for the win. Likewise, in the Men's pair with coxswain, the Tuesday winner, led by 2008 Olympic coxswain Marcus McElhenny, was passed in the middle of the race by a crew they'd beaten handily. Today, the "lead sled" belonged to Blaise Didier, Derek Johnson, and their coxswain--and 2011 U23 gold medalist--Anthony Altimari, after a mid-race move that left them well out in front.
The only uncontested "row-over" of these Trials was again for the Light Men's eight. Taking a break from what sounds like a typically idyllic summer up in Hanover, NH, the light eight made the most of their trip to Princeton: two weigh-ins, two row-overs at near-race pace, and--just to keep from being bored--and "few" 1500 meter pieces in straight fours at Coach Dan Roock's old stomping grounds, Lake Carnegie. Roock's group looks pretty solid, and returns three members of last year's eight in Jimmy Sopko, Matt Kochem, and Kenny McMahon, along with Nick LaCava, who raced the LM4 at Karapiro. Joining them are three medallists out of the U23 LM4 last year--Will Newell, Edward King, and Austin Meyer--and Christian Klein, out of the 2010 U23 light pair.
The eight's plan from now until Worlds? Escape the humid New Jersey and back to New Hampshire as soon as possible. Good plan!
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