Last week’s National Selection Regatta featured racing only in the open weight Olympic Events—-the single, pair, and double-—but the many of the leading lightweight contenders for the 2023 National Team pitched up in Chula Vista as well.
They turned up to do some racing, of course, against the open weights, but were also arriving in advance of the Chula Vista-based Olympic Event Selection Camp I that forms part of the process for naming the Light Doubles this year. A Trials event in recent years, the Light Double was added to list of team boats that will be chosen via the camp system this year.
During the racing last week, row2k caught up with Michelle Sechser and Jasper Liu. Both raced in the Light Double at Worlds last year, took the top spot in their respective Light Singles races at the Winter Speed Order in March, and look to make the boat again this year, hoping to qualify the US in the event for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
We spoke with them during the week of racing about how they were approaching the new Selection Camp pathway for their event and how taking on the open weights at the NSR fit into their training.
"We're really prepping for selection camp coming up, individually, so what's on our radar this week is getting ready for that," Liu said last Thursday, on the eve of the NSR Finals, which he and his long-time partner Zach Heese opted to race together in the double.
"It's always a good opportunity to race some fast boats and especially the competition we have here is going to be really quick. We definitely can learn from this experience and there's going to be some fast boats at Worlds anyway [in the Light Double].
"It's an interesting race because, there's no selection implications, but anytime you have your name written on a piece of paper, you want to be close to the top, so we're definitely trying to race it hard here."
Sechser, for her part, decided to stay in the single for the NSR, which gave her a chance to race Kara Kohler:
"I don't know that I've ever raced Kara Kohler in any sort of side by side event," she said, "so it was fun to do our time trial and have a pretty good run down the track on Tuesday.
"I haven't touched the double too much since Racice, to be honest. It's mostly just been time in a single really honing in on my stroke, the areas I'm trying to improve, and keeping the improvements coming.
"I asked Josy [Verdonkschot, the USRowing High Performance Director] to see if I could come out and race the heavyweight single," said Sechser. "I know that there are kind of a finite number of races that I get to enjoy in the remainder of my rowing career and having something to focus on and work hard towards and setting a goal for this Regatta, for me, was a really great way to just put my head down and really keep my nose to the grindstone leading into that selection camp block.
"[Racing the single] certainly helps keep that motivation and fire going in my belly heading into selection camp, being able to have this regatta. The single is such a beautiful, brilliant boat and the results are so much your own. For me, trying to put down a good result and make a bit of a statement about the boat speed I'm capable of going into camp is a very motivating experience."
Liu mentioned that he and Heese have not approached training any differently, as they look ahead to the Selection Camp instead of an open trial:
"It was pretty easy to train since we were both invited," Liu noted. "When we got back to Texas after the Speed Order, we just hopped back in the double and we definitely have a lot of experience in that boat together. We are going to have some fair competition here for seats and I hope that I personally come out with one of those. That's always the goal, and we'll see how it shakes out."
The Selection Camp route will be new for Liu and Heese, as well as for Sechser and her partner from both Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 season, Molly Reckford. All four made their previous appearances through open trials or by winning an NSR and earning qualification at a World Cup or Final Qualifyier.
"The Light Double has been a trials boat ever since I've been on the team," said Sechser noted, "so it will be new experience. My goal in that camp, though is just like it is with trials: making sure I'm the fastest, strongest, best rowing version of myself that I can be.
"It's really interesting the way Josy set it up with selection camp starting Monday," Sechser added, talking about how the camp was planned to immediately follow the NSR. "I think it's setting a good tone for what we want to accomplish this summer.
"It's certainly different," she said of the camp process, "and I don't know that it's my preferred method, but we play the hand we're dealt and love it for what it is.
"The speed Molly and I showed in our first year together, the Olympic year, is a great indicator of what we're capable of. I trust that the camp will sort out the fastest combination and will do everything I can to be as ready as possible for it--and the single [race at the NSR] is a great way to really test myself and see what I'm made of."
Liu sees that the Selection Camp could help make the Light Double faster in the end: "There's a little bit more pressure put on us individually as athletes--and also as a crew; there's always a little bit more intensity that's brought to training when we're preparing for something so early in the season, versus having the goal be Worlds that's a couple of months away."
For Sechser, as for Liu, both the NSR and the Selection Camp just offer more chances to prove their speed in pursuit of the ultimate goal, a spot in a fast Light Double when the event makes its final Olympic Games appearance in Paris.
"This is another regatta under my belt of learning how to win, learning how to move, and the strategy that comes with trying to take down a faster crew," said Sechser. "Those are all lessons that I hope I can carry over into the double this summer."
What excited Sechser the most, on the day she spoke with row2k, was the opportunity to line up the next morning with Kohler--who would go on to win, as we covered in Monday's report--but Sechser would take second overall against the rest of the open weight field.
"Kohler is an absolute legend. She's a wonderful sculler and getting to go head to head with her is just going to be a really great time. It's fun to have no pressure in terms of it being a part of my personal selection process, in a way that's really liberating and empowering.
"It really calls upon me needing to think through all the lessons from racing I've learned, like how do you take down someone that's 20 seconds faster than you on the erg? That's not something we deal with in the lightweight sculling field, where everyone's more or less the same erg score. So how do you race against someone 20 seconds faster than you, who sculls just as well but also probably better than you? It certainly takes a bit more strategy and a bit more, if anything, recklessness: not being afraid to race so hard to risk it all in order to go for the win."
This first Selection Camp is currently underway at the Chula Vista Olympic Training Center and will run thought May 21st. Afterwards, select athletes will have the opportunity to race at World Cup 2 before the second Selection Camp at Mercer Lake from June 25 to July 16 finalizes the camp boats for the 2023 World Championships.
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