With many of the US athletes I interviewed today, I didn't ask them too specifically about today's race, but in almost every case we talked a bit about how many elite athletes are simply regular folks who have had to learn a lot about themselves and their sport, and as such to have made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of hard lessons on their way to a World Championship team spot. The idea that any rower anywhere could be thought simply to be at a different stage of that journey was our focus, and I asked specifically what these athletes feel like they have had to learn to get where they are, and what they are still learning.
For US crews it was a good day overall as nine of 10 crews racing advanced; the only crew not to advance was the men's quad, who are in the middle of a pretty wild chain of events in their event; read below for more.
Light Men's Single
Nick Trojan ended up in a heater of a heat, the tightest of the morning for the top three quarterfinal qualifying spaces, so he had to improvise a bit out on the racecourse as the race unfolded. We talked about how he adjusted to the race as it happened.
"I definitely didn't expect it to be all six lanes across like that for the first 1000, but when I saw that happening, I knew that I had to be careful in the middle of the race to be a little more conservative to be ready for any attack toward the last 500," he said.
"Once I saw how tight it was at the last 500, I decided you go before anyone else could before the 250 to go to hope to shut people down. In a heat it's easier to do that."
Trojan has been in a bunch of good races stateside, but usually with only a couple scullers chasing each other for the top spots.
"It was a solid race all around, everyone was really fast, and it was the first time I've been in a tight race like that for a couple years, so it was a little bit of a shock," he said, smiling. "But I think it was definitely the best way to start the racing, because it's only going to get tighter."
There wasn't really an opportunity to cruise at all, as is sometimes the case in the heats in heavily subscribed events, but Trojan felt he had the base to deal with it.
"I felt under threat the whole time, but that's what you train for," he said. "We put in a lot of mileage to have the endurance for the second 1000 in a race like this, so in the end you can trust in the training and trust in the fitness, and it turned out really well."
Light Women's Single
US light women's single sculler Kate Bertko had a really easy go of it today, taking three seconds on the field every 500 for most of the race, all while dropping down into a very easy rhythm in which the FISA GPS race data had her under 30 strokes per minute for the last 700 meters, and down to 25 at the finish. I asked Bertko how she handles a race that opens up very quickly like this one, and especially one that might be reasonably expected to go that way even before you launch.
"I learned from Lori Dauphiny to always approach a 2k like it could be a flat-out 2k and be ready for anything, so that's the way I go into it for sure," she said. "With this type of race I got to enjoy the water, enjoy the race, and get the system opened up a bit."
When a race starts to open up, though, Bertko has a couple personal standards for when and how to go into a cruising mode.
"When I start to feel like it is unlikely I could be sprinted through," she said of the point where she starts to ease the pace. "Then I start to look for a more fluid rhythm. On rating, I didn't check the rate too much in this race so I couldn't really say how much I settled."
The event was one to the A/B semi , so Bertko joins three other scullers – Brazil, Great Britain, and New Zealand – for a few days off from racing.
Women's Pair
As the crews came down the track their heat, Denmark and the United States had established themselves out in the lead to contend for the one and only advancing spot, and they weren't likely to be able to throw too many surprises at each other, as they know each other well, having placed fourth (US) and fifth (Denmark) in the World Cup just weeks ago.
That didn't mean it wasn't an exciting race; with only one to advance, the crews raced with overlap the whole way down, first with the Danes slightly ahead, and then with the US slightly ahead before the US crew was able to stake a few more feet of water coming to the line.
The US crew was expecting a tough race.
"Going into this race we knew it was going to be hard, because with one to qualify everyone wants to go fast, and we know Denmark is really fast, as we’ve raced them in the past," bow seat Felice Mueller said. "Our only goal was to execute our race and try and stay really internal and relaxed no matter what, and I think that we executed that really well. When you’re down, the only thing you can really do is focus more on your boat."
Mueller points to bringing that focus to practice as the best way to count on it come race day.
"It takes a lot of preparation, every practice," she said. "Whether you’re going up against someone or not, just really zoning in on whatever rhythm you want to get so that when race day comes you can just go to that place."
The crew needed that rhythm at the end of the race today, and it did seem to come through.
"I thought it felt really good; it also was really hard," she said with a laugh. "I think the first race always kind of blows it out. Elle and I have talked and we think we know there are a few places where we can keep solidifying that rhythm."
As a result of the fight with Denmark, the crew posted the fastest time of the day, advancing along with the defending champ Great Britain crew, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
Men's Pair
This must be the first time in a while that the New Zealand men's pair did not have the fastest time of the day, and it's definitely the first time in a while they had the fourth fastest time of the day. All three of the faster times came out of the same heat as Italy, the Netherlands, and the French beat each other up to finish within 0.47 of one another – and that wasn't even over a qualifying spot, as it was four to advance, and Turkey was well back in fourth. Of course, the thing about times in the heats is that they are times in the heats – but maybe the event is tightening up, we'll have to wait and see.
The brand new US men's pair of Michael DiSanto and Dariush Aghai put themselves in the conversation as well with a second place finish in a tight pack with Serbia, Canada, and Poland (slight homer factor note: the men's pair from Canada consists of two Princeton heavyweights).
The US men rowed a solid, almost workaday race, running in second throughout, and posting the second fastest time in each of the first three 500s. The pair came together only this summer, but they have known each other for some time.
"We knew each other for a long time, we rowed against each other for a long time, and finally we get in a boat together," stroke seat Aghai said. "It's been going pretty well, at least back in the States, so here there is an element that we don’t know what we’re capable of because we haven’t had to blow the doors off anything just yet."
The pair made a conscious decision not to get too wrapped up in what was going on around them, too worry too much about the Olympic qualifier, or the like, and stick to the plan.
"Today the goal was just to get to the 1000 without wondering what’s going on around us, put on the blinders and then gauge where we were at and then taking it from there," he said. "We got to the thousand and we were safely in the top four, so that was good. But you never know in a World’s regatta. Things can change at any point."
This is especially the case in the pair, where big starts and bigger finishes are part of the lore of the event.
"Exactly, especially in a pair," he agreed. "It’s a boat that the speed can change so quickly and we know that, so we made a move kind of through the thousand to make sure we were comfortably in there. After that we were able to hold that speed and enjoy the course on the way down."
As for the dynamic in the boat, the duo have split up their jobs so that diSanto is calling the race, and Aghai goes with it.
"Mike as a bow man does more of the calls of where we are," Aghai said. "He reminds me to breathe, sit up, this is where we’re at, we’re going to make a move here. Honestly the stuff I say is just a little more like how I’m feeling. I’ll be like oh f yeah, let’s keep going, this is great; whatever I can spit out. Maybe I set the mood and he runs the business."
Out on the course, the crew is trying to keep their learning curve steep.
"Our race today confirmed what everyone says about when you get to a World regatta," he said. "Even the races that are won by what seems comfortably, the margins were just a few seconds here or there. It could change at any point. In our race, we had two lengths on the Polish pair, and they started moving in, but then caught a buoy. If they wouldn’t have caught that buoy they could have been right next to us, so that would have been a change. You’re never comfortable really, so especially as young guys, so I think we’ve got to got to remember that, always got to be on our toes."
Light Men's Double
This is one of the bigger events of the regatta, and as a result most crews were not holding anything back, each arguably trying to get the best quarterfinal draw and shot at the semi. Those quarterfinals will be critical and insanely fierce, as the Olympic cutoff is 11 – so if you can make it out of the quarters into the semis, your odds get really quite good.
And so it was on between the Italians and the US crew as they pulled away from the field in their heat, , with the Americans making moves and the Italians countering, all the way down the course.
"We knew Italy was going to be fast, so we figured let’s do what we can against them, and if we win or we end up second, at least we would know how we stack up relative to that kind of speed," stroke seat Josh Konieczny said. "We wanted to be able to put in a full race and see what happens."
The crew also felt like they were able to get their sea legs under them a bit by having the course to themselves in an actual race; as we noted yesterday, the course has been bouncy due largely to the record number of crews entered this year, including in the big boat events.
"It was nice to finally row on a flat course," bow seat Andrew Campbell noted. "We’ve been practicing in a lot of bounce lately because practice has been so busy, and this is our first real go in good water, so I think that alone helped pull us together."
As for the Olympic stakes at the regatta, the crew let that go, for now at least.
"My own way of dealing with it, is through the warm-up and through the race, was just to let everything take care of itself – really to go out and just row," Konieczny said. "It helped me to relax and be in the moment rather than thinking about all the different factors that go into qualification."
Campbell agreed, noting that the quarters are where things will get intense.
"Right, it's one race at a time," he said. "The quarter finals are a huge deal at this regatta, because it’s there that the top 12 are determined, and since the top 11 go to the Olympics a lot of hard racing will take place in the quarter finals. It feels like we’re set up pretty well for that."
Light Women's Double
The light women's double is going to be another nutty event if the heats times are any evidence; of the 20 crews that advanced directly to the quarterfinals today, fifteen were within less than six seconds of one another.
The US double went into the race expecting a full pull, and they got it in spades as it was the closest overall of the five heats.
"The perspective we had was that if we want to be medalists here, if we want to qualify for the Olympics, these are people we need to beat regardless," US stroke Michelle Sechser said. That might mean you need to beat them the first day on the heat, but when you want to be the best in the world you have to be able to beat these people at any point."
As with many of the crews I spoke to today, I asked about how they are reckoning and dealing with the Olympic qualification element of the regatta.
"There is sort of that pressure that people are bringing up about needing to qualify this boat for the lightweight women of the US," she said. "This is for everyone, for the country so we can have that spot in Rio. But it’s something that we’ve chosen to kind of keep out of our minds. Adding pressure to it won’t make us perform necessarily at any higher level. We keep the focus very simple, execute, perform, win, execute, perform, win, and our best will be enough to qualify that spot.
"So we were able to get through our first checkpoint, and definitely identified some areas where we can pick up some more speed and improve some things before the quarter final," she said.
She adds that in the end, it feels a lot like her most important high school and college races.
"It still is just so exhilarating to be out there and it feels very similar to the nerves you had in high school, at Youth Nationals, at the Cincinnati regatta. It’s just as exciting; you get to the line and it’s this beautiful sense of how hard you’ve worked that one moment, for these seven minutes and knowing that you’ve come too far to shirk away from it right now, to let the pressure break you down. Just embrace that. We’ve put in hours and meters and miles and all this time just so we can perform now, and to own that and to make that pressure really make you rise to the level."
Men's Four
The men's four final always offers up some of the great A finals of any Worlds regatta, and this year looks like it could be one for the ages. Across four one-to-qualify heats, four crews that are headed to the reps posted times that could have won a heat, and there are another half-dozen crews within striking distance of those as well. Only Italy led their heat the whole way, while the other three qualifiers Australia, Canada, and the US all had to row through at least one place to get into the lead. Don't be getting a hot dog when these semis go off.
With Great Britain focusing on the eight this year, there was not a clear favorite, so that role fell to the US based largely on their World Cup win. In a long and probing conversation with stroke Seth Weil, most of which follows, I asked about how the crew approached that sometimes unwelcome designation.
"I think there are two ways to judge yourself and your performance in general," he said. "You can judge yourself based on the people around you and your competition, which is pretty natural - because you’re constantly surrounded and constantly ranked. Or you can try and judge yourself based on your own internal metrics. I think especially in situations where feel like there might be a lot of pressure on you, having a good set of internal metrics to judge yourself against is a good way to combat that pressure.
"When you have that, all you have to do is put down the best race that you can. So you are comparing against yourself, and then you hope that your coaching, and the training, and the structure allow that to be good enough win.
"So as opposed to thinking 'I have to go out and be faster than this crew, or be faster than that guy, or I have to beat him or them or whoever,', instead you realize all I have to do is what I’ve done a little bit better. Or maybe do what I have done in practice a little bit better.
"If you expect someone to step outside of that, it can become dicey really fast. So I think that’s the easiest way, and that’s how I try and approach things."
I asked how that plays out on the course, and Weil noted that it can be unpredictable.
"It never plays out how you want it to!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "So like any stressful situation, whether it's racing or even something like emergency procedures or the like, it’s pure training.
"I think one of the best motivators for training well is knowing that, if you train well and diligently and consciously that on race day or when an accident happens, or whatever situation you’re in, the training takes over. However much effort you put in each day consciously executing the training directly correlates to how smooth, efficient, and less stressful it will be when you have to execute. It is true that there are people with lazy with training and sloppy with training, and it can work if you get lucky, but you’re kind of rolling the dice on the day. So the more diligent you are about checking the boxes in training, the more that will just take over naturally. So on high pressure days, you don’t have to worry quite as much about the details of the game, you just have to worry about doing what you do.
"That’s something that Henrik (three seat Henrik Rummel) and I to say to each other before a race - let’s go out and do what we do. It’s a meaningless expression, simply let’s just go try and execute what we’ve rehearse so many times in practice, and that really requires conscious rehearsal. That’s why for me it’s a really high motivator to train, because training sucks; generally it’s hard to do."
In today's race, the crew went out expecting a serious challenge.
"Today I think we did a good job at expecting a good push in the first half from somebody," he said. "It happened last year when we just edged out Serbia for second place in the heat, so we knew we were going to expect heat in the first half, and the heat came from South Africa today. It was a little unexpected based on how we saw the field, but on the other hand, it was expected as we knew this was going to happen.
"Charlie (two-seat Cole) did a great job (calling the race), and Henrik and Glenn (bow-seat Ochal) did a great job at being, okay, this is the situation we are in. And you know again, all you can rely on is what you do; you can’t expect to step outside of the actual situation you are in."
Men's Quad
The men's quad may have been the stunner event of the morning; specifically, the defending World Champion Ukraine quad as well as the defending silver medalist GB quad are both headed to the reps. Further, all six advancing crews were within 1.8 seconds of one another. I didn't get a chance to speak to the US men's quad, but hopefully can do so if/when they advance from what will probably be the most hellish but exciting reps of the regatta.
As a consolation, the US crew was able to avoid what is going to be a truly psycho rep, as it includes both the aforementioned crews, the Russian crew that won the European Championships, and the Canadian crew, which has shown solid speed this summer. Ai yi yi.
Men's Single
The men's single heats shook out pretty much to form, with nary a photo finish or significant upset, although it is very much worth noting that Mahe Drysdale posted the best time of the day while followed closely by Mexican sculler Juan Carlos Cabrera.
There weren't many other surprises – that is, assuming you already know that US scull Ken Jurkowski is back in the mix after two years of rehabbing a few nagging injuries. It took a really tight trials stateside dueling with Tom Graves for Ken to start feeling like himself again, and he showed up to race today, finishing in second place in his heat behind Alan Campbell of Great Britain.
"It’s been a challenge coming back after overcoming some injury problems and some rehab from surgery and things," he said, "but I’m definitely starting to feel more like myself. Trials was a good start actually. There was some good competition there, and it definitely forced me into elevating my game, and I started to remember what it felt like."
Jurkowski went through the so-called Regatta of Death, the last ditch qualifier that is run just weeks before the Olympics, so has some interesting thoughts on balancing the desire simply to go out and race for a World Championship with the near-imperative of bringing back an Olympic spot for your country (and of course possibly for yourself). You can read his comments in today's mini-feature here: Ken Jurkowski: 'The Stakes are always High!' . As he gets his elite level legs back, Jurkowski is starting to think and talk like a single sculler again, which is always a good thing.
Women's Single
With advancing to the quarterfinals, the heats of the women's single advanced 18 scullers to the quarterfinals without requiring too much exertion from the top scullers.
Another notable finish is that of the New Zealand sculler Fiona Bourke, who placed third in her heat, a fair distance off the leaders; row2k readers will remember that defending world champ Emma Twigg was not selected to the NZ team due to deciding to study in Europe this year. Since the number of women's singles to qualify for Rio from Worlds is down to nine as of this quadrennial, if creating the possibility that she could end up in the Regatta of Death next summer if Bourke cannot
Gevvie Stone of the US didn't seem quite to hit her groove today, but her row was plenty good enough to advance comfortably behind Fle Erichsen of Denmark, who does seem to be hitting her stride after time away from training after she had a child. Stone advances to the quarterfinals with the consolation that if this was a stumble, it is better to get it out of the way now rather than later in the week, when the wiggle room goes down to pretty much zero, and the stakes go, well, the opposite direction.
That's it from Aiguebelette for today; be sure to check the two other features we posted today before we start posting again tomorrow – we hope you enjoy!
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