National Team Trials for six lightweight and four Para events wrapped up Friday at Mercer Lake. Run in conjunction with USRowing’s Summer Nationals for Senior and U23 events, these Trials filled the spots on the 2022 US National Team in the 'International' (non-Olympic) boat categories and the Para events open to Trials (the PR3 Mix Four, a camp-selected crew, was named last month).
Racing these Trials alongside the Summer Championships allowed several trialing crews to race multiple times, and the newly-named US LW4x took full advantage, winning the open W4x title on Thursday ahead of their uncontested trials race Friday morning.
The trials also gave some of the Team USA U23 crews the opportunity to gain some valuable racing experience: the U23 LW2- of Ava Sack and Elsa Andrews, who did not get to race anyone in their uncontested U23 Trial, got into a great race here with the eventual Senior Trials winners--Elaine Tierney and Solveig Imsdahl--which is sure to help them as they prep for Varese.
And the U23 LM4x won here again, and will now have the opportunity–-if they wish–-to race at both the Varese U19/U23 Worlds and the Senior World Championships in September in Racice.
Para Trials
The morning opened with four Para finals, all uncontested: newcomer Andrew Mangan made his first senior team in the PR1 M1x, while Tokyo Paralympian Russell Gernaat will be back on the world stage in the PR2 M1x.
CRI’s Jennifer Fitz-Roy will be the USA’s PR2 W1x, and she has been training since 2019 with the goal of being ready to race at Worlds in her event.
"I've been training with the Para High Performance Group at Community Rowing for the past three years," said Fitz-Roy, "where I have the opportunity to be on the water most weekday mornings and train alongside some of the PR3 rowers on the senior national team.
"I'm really excited about the progress I've made in terms of technique since my first trials in 2019, and I'm continuing to erg as part of my training plan through US Rowing High Performance Para. I also started CrossFit a couple of years ago, and that's helped me to build my strength and endurance.
"It's amazing to have met my goal of being on the senior/para national team, and I'm eagerly anticipating my first world championships."
Fitz-Roy plans, in addition to training in Boston, to race in her event at the Royal Canadian Henley next month to gain more race experience head of Worlds.
The one Para crew with some racing experience already this season was the duo of Todd Vogt and Pearl Outlaw in the PR2 Mix 2x, who already raced, and won, at the Gavarite International Para Regatta in May, as part of their preparations for Worlds. While they did not need that experience today, their gold medal weekend in Gavarite has set the tone for their work since getting back.
"We didn't really expect going into trials today that we would be uncontested," said Outlaw. "We were actually hoping that we would have a couple other boats to compete against, so it was definitely interesting, but we went into it with the mindset of we're just going to lay it all out on the course and see what we can do what we can do and see the progress we've made in the last six weeks or so since Italy. So, in our minds, we went just as hard as if we had people alongside us."
The duo had what Outlaw called a "bumpy" run-up to their successes in Gavarite: moving to a new training location in Portland, Oregon, trying to find the right equipment, and even some illness issues.
With all of that behind them, said Outlaw, "the last six weeks since coming back from Italy have just been super solid. Every day we get really great sessions in and we've just been making a lot of technical progress, on and off the water. We've just putting everything we have into it like it's a full time job."
"Today's race has been on our radar for probably 11 months since last summer," said Vogt. "Last year we were hoping to go to Worlds in Shanghai, but then it got cancelled. We really wanted to come back this year and do this properly and go to Worlds. Clearly trials was a big part of getting to the World Championships in September and, although we are uncontested, it was still good to do what we did today: our time was like 20 seconds off the world's best time. There was a little bit of headwind, and we have not really backed off training at all. So to just show up on Friday morning, no taper, fairly fatigued and just knock out a piece that was 96% of GMS--that's really encouraging."
What is next? "We're looking forward to just getting just grinding even harder for the next two months," said Outlaw.
Light Singles
The Light Singles confirmed two athletes that have already raced for the US on the World Cup circuit this year: Cambridge Boat Club’s Mary Jones Nabel and Texas Rowing Center’s Jimmy McCullogh.
Jones Nabel–-already a two-time World Cup gold medalist in 2022–-won her official spot on the USA Worlds roster with a patient row that separated her from the field, putting up a clear 11 second margin that you might expect from at athlete who has already shown herself to be world-class with her wins in Europe this season. Her closest competition was two-time U23 team member Liza Ray, but Jones powered away with the same aplomb she showed in the middle 1000 to beat Dutch sculler Martine Veldhuis at World Cup I in Belgrade and Australia’s Georgia Nesbitt at World Cup II in Poznan.
"Coming into this season I was excited to focus back on the lightweight single after focusing on the double for the years leading up to the Olympic Trials," said Jones Nabel. "I really always loved the single and having the opportunity to go and race the World Cups. It let me be in touch with the boat on my own to push myself to see how fast I could go, which was great. Having the Trial as my last race of this first block of the summer was a really great way to get the checkbox of going to the World Championships but also just kind of put the cap on my goal for the year of making the national team in the single again."
With the late Worlds date, Jones Nabel said, "It is really splitting the season into two almost, because we're trying to focus all the way through to the end of September. It's just too long, especially when we started in February. So I was probably a little underprepared in February and then kind of built through the racing season. Now we'll take some time off and reset and then have two full training blocks to build back up to the World Championships."
When asked if she plans any more racing this summer, Jones said no: "It's so competitive with the girls that are there training at Cambridge Boat Club that you don't necessarily need a regatta to be pushed. I get pushed every day by the great training group that I have.
"With the training blocks I did leading into the World Cups, you use it as a practice for how you want to lead into the World Cup and the World Championship racing. So I'll use a lot of the same preparations that I did going into the World Cup season, the things that made me feel really fast and prepared, and capitalize on those--and then analyze the things that I think held me back from being my fastest in the past few weeks, to improve on those points so that I can hit a higher peak in September, based on the lessons I learned."
In the Men's Light Single, Jimmy McCullough, who made the B Final in Poznan and took 10th overall, had a more exciting race: the New York A.C.’s Sam Melvin broke away from the field with McCullogh and got his bow in front in the third 500, only to have McCullough answer the challenge to take the win by two seconds. The racing between the two put a healthy 10 second plus margin between themselves and Riverside’s Alex Twist in third place.
"That was a great race with Sam," said McCullough. "I had not been side by side with him in a while, and he was definitely saving something for the final.
"I got to race at World Cup 2 and that was a really good prep. There's a lot of fast people in this single event, and it was great being able to line up against some of the some of the fastest. In my semi final for the World Cup, I had Fintan McCarthy (IRL) and and Matt Dunham (NZL) and those guys are just elite. You realize there's there's so much more speed out there to find, but then there's also crews that are right around my speed, so it's great to race them and and you know feel that side by side racing: feel putting on the moves and absorbing the moves from other boats, so that was super valuable experience.
"Going forward, I'll definitely be buckling down. It's not a huge amount of time between me and what it would take to contend for the A Final at the World Championships. Obviously it gets harder and harder to get faster as you make these jumps, but finding where to improve to make that jump next is where the focus going to be the next two months."
Light Pairs
Vesper’s Elaine Tierney and Solvieg Imsdahl had a similar battle on their hands from the U23 duo of Sack and Andrews, but they never trailed and took the win by a closed length in a two boat duel. Both have already raced for the US on the U23 level–-and Imsdahl competed on the a 2019 Pan Am Team–-but this will be their first senior Worlds team.
The Light Men’s Pair was also a two boat affair, but the New York A.C.’s Harrison Tsavaris and Justin Stevens pulled steadily away to win by 5 seconds and a smidge over Vesper’s Noah Pingul and John Swanson. Two former collegiate club athletes, Tsavaris (Fordham) and Swanson (Vanderbilt) came out of the A.C.’s year-round pre-elite training group, and won the National Championship in the Light Four with on Thursday as a prelude to making their first National Team today.
"We were really just hoping to jump Vesper off the line," said Tsavaris. "Stay ahead, take more strokes, and just really try and blitz them at the ends, then keep ahead during the middle of the piece. Our training is really what we have to thank for because, at the end of the day, we didn't really have the start we were expecting to have--it wasn't as fast. But instead of getting frantic and saying okay, we need to take a length in the first hundred meters, we were really able to fall back and rely on our training together."
"We didn't necessarily have the benefit of very many practices in the pair together," noted Stevens. "But Harrison and I have rowed together a lot and we know we're both racers and have a really good racing mentality. In this kind of a dual race, just bringing that extra mental edge can can help a lot and falling back on all our racing experience--because we've raced a lot of duels, and a lot of National Championships for the Club--and just having a lot of fun. The lightweight pair is a super fun boat, personally, for me, and I've always wanted to row in it at Nationals. It was the first time I got row a lightweight pair here, so I was kind of just over the moon just to be here and rowing it."
Light Quads
Bow-seat of the Light Women’s Quad, Audrey Boerson, told row2k back in May at NSR 2 that the quad was the priority all along for herself and stroke Sophia Luwis–-despite, of course, how well the duo had done in the racing that weekend against open weights Kara Kohler and Sophia Vitas.
This week, they made good on that plan, along with quad-mates Elizabeth Martin (3) and Cara Stawicki (2), and earned both the official LW4x designation and the win we mentioned up top: the USRowing Women’s Quad National Championship.
"Racing this week was all about getting more repetitions under our belt," said Boerson, "after coming off of a tour at Holland Becker and Womens Henley. We're a young crew, so getting to line up and racing is crucial to our development. We were really excited to race the open event and win against the open women, racing up a weight class poses a lot more challenges, and we're really proud about how we handled ourselves in that situation.
"For the rest of the season we'll work on repeating a lot of the things we've learned this past week. We have a lot of time and work to put into the boat to be able to take on an international field, but we've worked hard to build a good strong base so far that we'll continue to grow in the next few weeks."
Training at Whitemarsh Boat Club as a Whitemarsh/Riverside composite, they also raced this weekend in Black Sheep Rowing kit, donning the colors of the UK rowing club to race here at the Trials and starting their own Black Sheep Instagram account.
"Black Sheep has been our coach Sean Hall's idea for a while now. To us it means taking non traditional paths to success and overcoming whatever obstacles are put in our way to make us stronger and more resilient. We like to say adversity for breakfast, challenge for lunch, and gold for dinner!"
The winner on the Light Men’s quad on the water was the Conshohocken Training Center’s Light Men’s Quad. Already Varese-bound after winning U23 Trials last month, this Mid-Atlantic quartet of undergrads from UPenn, UDel, and Georgetown rowed close to six minutes (6:05), not far off the times also turned in on Friday at Lucerne’s ‘Lake of the Gods’ by the German and Dutch LM4x’s at the World Cup.
With U23 the priority and–likely–a late-September Worlds a non-starter for guys who will need to be back in classes by then, the USA LM4x declined their Senior Team spot.
Instead, Riverside’s Mats Terwiesch, Ashton Knight, Ian Richardson, and Sean Richardson will accept the berth, earning it by edging Undine by 2.5 seconds for the second place spot.
Racice-Bound
These 10 boats will join the 6 Olympic event boats that accepted their spots on the team last week, leaving just the naming of the big boats and one final round of open Trials for the Women's 1x and Men's 2x on August 8-10.
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