Gevvie Stone summed up the vibe of rowing in a World Championship heat or rep in the third year of an Olympic cycle in two quick sentences.
"Every country prepares for this regatta, the World Championship, especially in the pre-Olympic season," said the US Olympian. "This is it, everyone is giving it everything they've got." While that's kind of stating the obvious to those in the know, she nailed it.
It's a feeling that is visible on the face of nearly every athlete that is racing here this week on the course in Linz-Ottensheim. The intensity and nervous anticipation is etched into the expressions of the crews walking to the launch dock with boats and oars, the way the results are easy to read on the opposite dock in the eyes of the athletes returning from a successful run to advance, or a loss that knocks them out of medal (or probably more importantly, qualifying) contention.
On a second long day of racing in the 2019 World Rowing Championships that included a schedule of 15 heats followed by 26 reps that ran into the late afternoon, there was plenty of both kinds of emotion on display.
Fortunately for the US crews racing Monday, there were no crestfallen faces. Two of the crews advanced out of their heat, including Stone and Cicely Madden in the women's double, and para PR1 women's single sculler Hallie Smith, and three more made good with their second chances races in the reps.
In those races, the men's lightweight double won their rep to advance, and two others rowed from behind with dramatic, comeback wins. In the men's single, Kevin Meador raced from several lengths down to preserve his chances for the week.
(Read a full account of that race here.)
In the men's double, Justin Keen and Erik Frid were rowing in a rep that was stressed beyond normal by a broken oarlock on the start line on Kazakhstan's boat that forced all the crews back to the boatyard, and delayed the race for two hours, to the very end of the day's schedule.
"We pulled into the start line, they counted down to four minutes, and then they delayed our race two hours," Keen said. "So we came back, got a massage, hung out, and then went out and warmed up again. We knew it was going to be a long race, so we got off the start and fell into our base pace."
Base pace was enough to keep them close to, or in contact with, the Bulgarian crew in front of them, but not enough to win as the finish line grew closer.
"In the last two-fifty, I saw that we were still down, and I figured we might as well go and win it," Keen said. "I don't know how far down. Erik kept yelling at me to keep my head in the boat. I think it was close to even. I think they were up a deck at the thousand, and I knew if we pulled even, we could take them."
Of the other US crews that raced Monday, PR2 men's single sculler Isaac French, the PR3 men's pair, the lightweight men's pair, and the lightweight men's quad all missed advancing and will row in reps.
Among the advancing crews, para women's sculler Hallie Smith was the first to advance. Smith rowed in second the length of the course, content in knowing that she was locking in one of the three available spots to move into the semifinals.
"I'm feeling really good, and I'm feeling redeemed," she said. "I didn't have that great of a race at World Cup II, but I kicked it into gear, worked with my coaches, and I definitely proved myself to myself, and to everyone else, that I'm back in it."
Smith said she worked to change her training and race planning after finishing sixth in the second World Cup in Poznan, Poland and felt confident before her race Monday.
"I had the usual nerves, but not doubts," she said. "I worked hard on a new type of race plan, where I focus on the middle thousand a bit more. For once, the middle thousand felt good instead of it being that awful moment where I think, why don't I just stop and collapse and start crying. It felt good."
Next up was Stone and Madden. For both, racing in the double at the senior World Championships was a first-time experience. Madden did race in the double at the 2017 U23 World Championships, and Stone has made a senior team career in the single, rowing in two Olympics, and winning a silver medal in Rio. But neither has raced in the double in a senior Worlds before.
Stone lost her seat in the single in her return to international racing to Kara Kohler at the US trials this spring, but teamed up with Madden who finished third in those trials. The new double won the next set of trials, and are now in Linz-Ottensheim attempting to medal, or at least earn a spot for the boat in Tokyo.
Stone and Madden wasted no time in their heat, took the lead from the start and stayed in first until they crossed the line, beating Canada, Italy, Lithuania and Ukraine.
"It's exciting to be here," Madden said. "We had a smart race, and now it's onward to the next. I think everyone has nerves," she said about being in her first senior World Championships. "It never gets easier, it's just about being the best I can be, and we can be as a boat, that's all you can do."
Stone said she was happy with both the way they raced and in exploring a new boat class. "We got the job done. The goal was to win the heat and progress directly to the semi, and we got the green check mark on that."
As far as racing in a new event at a senior World Championship, Stone said she was enjoying having the company of a teammate to share the experience with.
"It's been really fun to have a partner to do it all with," she said. "It helps with the pressure of being in the boat, and the positive reinforcement of she's pulling hard, I've got to pull harder. Doing it for each other. But also, that week leading up to racing went a lot faster with another person to distract me."
After falling from second to fourth in the last quarter of their heat race on Sunday in the men's lightweight double on Sunday, Nick Trojan and Andrew Campbell, Jr., went back to their hotel and looked at the race data.
"We looked at it all a little more closely, and we saw we were the fastest boat to the halfway point in the event, so our goal today was to go out there and maybe practice our pacing a little bit, relax a little bit more," Campbell said.
Today in the reps, they based a new race plan on what they learned, gained the lead from the start and held it to the finish to move back into the hunt for a place in the finals by advancing into quarter finals.
"You try not to look at the data, because you don't want to tell yourself you're overthinking things, and we tried to avoid that and (coach Linda Muri) kind of gave us a few things to stay encouraged by, so that was a good confidence boost for sure," added Trojan.
"We weren't too worried (about the Sunday race)," he said. "We saw we had the fastest heat, in terms of time, so it was kind of comforting in a way to see that because we were with the Germans (Jason Osborne and Jonathan Rommelmann), who've been undefeated.
"We had a good first 1600 meters and then it kind of came apart, but we're right on that edge where we're just about to crack to a different speed. It was nice to know that we were with the Germans for a while, we just need to find that next one percent."
Notes from the Course
Use the Directional
Linz-Ottensheim is a tight venue in both length, and the room in the boatyard. The course ends not very far after the finish line, and crews basically have to put on the brakes after crossing, and then have a good look around, before turning to row out of the finish area.
That doesn't always work perfectly, and near misses have happened. Just after one men's pair rep, Brazil and the Dutch pair had a brief meeting on the water. They didn't actually crash, but the sudden situation startled both crews and the Dutch rowers tipped into the water. They were quickly pulled out and assisted back into their boat.
Let's Get Ready to Rumble!!!
It didn't exactly sound like American boxing announcer Michael Buffer doing his iconic pre-bout call, but there was a bit of a similar sound when the announcers at the start broadcast the country and crew names across he course and down through the PA system in the grandstands.
And it drew a few animated reactions from the athletes on the line.
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