Impending storms held off for a busy day at Mercer, though a slight headwind greeted the rowers on the course. Races were held for the naming of eleven boats to compete for the USA at the World Championships in Chungju, Korea at the end of August. The small group of spectators watched the start via live stream on their smart phones, then turned their eyes toward the course for the second thousand meters of the race too see their friends and family members move toward the finish. As the first World Championship trials of the new quadrennial, it was full of first time national team hopefuls, as well as many veterans vying to continue their rowing careers.
This race was the last opportunity to make the 2013 World Championships team; other crews qualified through the World Cup races or selection camps. Today, an impressive group of athletes won their spots for what will be exciting and competitive races in Korea.
Men's Single
Steven Whepley has been working toward today's victory for quite some time, taking the second place. Today as he leapt ahead of the filed early and stayed out for the race, he earned his red, white and blue. As someone who has raced both in team boats and the single, he reflected on the challenge of racing the single on an international level.
"In the single you don’t have a teammate or partner to ledger what's going on inside your head, and I am sure I will have a lot to sort out myself my first time racing internationally. "
Men's Pair
Both men of the pair, Michael DiSanto and Alex Karowski have one Worlds under their belt, and as they sprinted for their win, they took the spot on their second Worlds team.
"The other guys were about a length up but in the last 500 we took the rate up and went for it, it was pretty tough," said DiSanto. "The chance to represent the United States, to wear the uni with the USA down the side, it's a big deal."
Men's Double
Despite John Graves' NSR#1 win and ninth place finish at World Cup 3 in Lucerne, he chose to race the double with partner Ben Dann for the opportunity to race at Worlds. Not a bad plan, as the two edged out their competition for the spot on the US team.
"We really wanted to execute our race plan," said Graves, "which was to stay relaxed in the first 1500 and try to drop the speed in the last part of the race and see where that took us. The Potomac boat was tough competition and I give those guys a lot of credit for putting up a good race."
How does Graves like racing the double versus his time in the single?
"You are not out there by yourself anymore and it really matters being on the same page as your partner, it's simple to go out there in your single and go as fast as you can but if we are not on the same page we cant go that fast."
Lightweight Women's Single
Despite injuries preventing her from racing this past spring and early summer, Michelle Sechser from the Oklahoma High Performance Training Center raced down the course, and put up a great sprint to take the title of the USA LW1x
"I knew the best I could do was to come out and move my boat as fast as I could the whole way down the course; it was either going to be good enough or it wasn't," said Sechser. "In OKC when we are doing erg workouts we have a "downhill" call at the half-way point of any piece, then we take off and drop our splits for the rest of the workout. So I have been watching the video of the French M2- at the 2000 Olympics where they make this massive move at the 1000m when they are in 4th, then crush the field. I must have watched it 20 times in the past week, so at the 1000 I visualized that race and made the grind."
Lightweight Men's Single
Less than two weeks ago Andrew Campbell was on podium at the U23 World Championships in Linz, Austria, with the gold medal draped around his neck. This youthful rower, just in his twenties was back to qualify for his third senior national team.
"It's always hard to come back from a championship regatta and to turn it around this quickly so I just focused on getting rested. It was all about getting my body and head in a place where I am ready to race again. My goal for the summer was to win U23 so this is icing on the cake. I was bronze at the senior level last year so I am looking to improve on that. "
Lightweight Men's Pair
Greg Flood and Frank Petrucci of New York Athletic Club (but who are training at OKC), raced past Lucerne silver medalists Tyler Nase and Michael Wales to compete in Korea.
"We were down on the start and we ran into some buoy trouble but stuck to our guns and kept it level, said Flood. "We knew we had some speed through the second thousand. We focused on rowing long and efficiently and at the 1000 we took a big move to take control of the race in the third 500."
Petrucci added, "We felt good about our training. You always get bad days and good days, but we had more good days. We had faith in the training we put in. I can't say we weren’t intimidated by the other pair after the race Nase and Wales had in Lucerne because it was impressive result, but we believed in the training we put in."
Men's Coxed Pair
With the elimination of the coxed four at the international level, there aren't too many opportunities for the shorter people, but the M2+ has withstood the test of time and offers more seats for coxswains and heavyweight men. The PennAC entry of coxswain Stephen Young, Rob Munn and Matthew Wheeler, had an early and solid lead. As there isn't much competition, Young discussed the challenges of properly training for Worlds.
"A lot of the issues with training for the 2+ in the US is one, there aren’t a ton of them around, and two, it's hard to find a boat in the same speed. The gold standard time is 6:42, and the closest thing in time to that is the lightweight men's single which goes 6:46. Knowing that, if you have a pretty good single sculler, doing pieces against them is a good way to measure your speed. But a heavyweight men's single should be going about six seconds faster; doing pieces against that is really advantageous because we will get used to a situation where we're racing against someone that's a little bit quicker than us."
Lightweight Women's Quad
Seattle Rowing Center took an early lead on GMS Rowing Club in the LW4x. SRC crew of Helen Tompkins, Nancy Miles, Rachel Stortvedt and Hillary Saeger were named to the team after a solid win.
Saegar, who will be competing in her fourth World Championships in the LW4x, felt very positive about the race and the crew. "We had a pretty clean start, and we were high the first 500 with a lot of excitement. The lineup was finalized a week ago, and it didn't change a lot, but in the past week the rhythm changed for the better. I feel like we have a lot of power—we're strong. We really trust in each other's abilities because we know the process of selection we went through to get in this boat, and we know we are all fast and capable of success."
Lightweight Men's Quad
The LM4x race began as a very exciting race with three strong and competent crews coming down the course with small margins between them. The Malta, Riverside composite and Craftsbury crews all went back and forth down the course, until the RBC crew caught a boat-stopping crab with 300 meters to go. It was a heartbreaking moment for everyone; not only did their competition want the best race possible for all, but many of them were friends with one another. The Malta crew of Shane Madden, Dave Smith, Colin Ethridge and Andrew Quinn sprinted the last 250 for the win. This will be Malta's second consecutive year sending the lightweight quad to worlds.
"I felt prepared to execute our plan and also prepared to deal with whatever might arise during the race," said Smith. "We expected Riverside to go out quickly, they have a very good start, and for Craftsbury to have a strong body of the piece."
Smith, a former member of Riverside, "felt pretty bad because I am friends with everyone out there and that's not how you want it to go down. Everyone has put in a lot of time in preparing for this, and I was impressed with the level of racing. I am thankful we have other crews like that, so we can push each other."
Lightweight Men's Double
Austin Meyer and Nick Trojan have been rowing together for two summers and though they raced uncontested today, they won't be without competition in just a few weeks.
"We've been rowing together two years, but only a few weeks each year, it's always thrown together last minute. We were able to spend more time together doing steady state and mechanics this year. We're still in that building phase; we will be really ready to go once we hit Korea. We have improved since last year; our consistency is improving. That’s the thing in this event—its not one or two good races but four races in consecutive days so consistency is key," said Meyer. "Some of the people we raced in Lithuania last year have been doing really well in the world cup circuit, and we know we have improved so we are really excited to race them."
Women's Four
The US Training Center 4- of Emily Hueslkamp, Olivia Coffey, Tessa Gobo and Felice Muller were the last crew to go down the course, also uncontested.
"We wanted to use the row today as a race walk through," said Huelskamp. "We are excited to keep working until we get to the line then just race with the support of our training, friends and family behind us."
The athletes will be heading to Korea a week, with media to follow in time for the opening ceremonies. We'll keep you updated with daily reports from the World Championships.
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