USRowing Shines at World Rowing Cup, Fueling Olympic Hopes as Final Selection Camp Commences
BY CHIP DAVIS | VIDEO BY ADAM REIST
As final selection camp for the 2023 U.S. National Team gets under way in Princeton and Lake Mercer, N.J. June 26 to July 16, the Olympic future looks bright for Team USA. The U.S. won eight medals, seven in Olympic events, at the World Rowing Cup II in Varese, Italy in June.
Returning to Princeton from Varese, USRowing Chief High Performance Officer Josy Verdonkschot allowed that he’s “pretty satisfied” with the results. “If this is the direction we are taking, I can not complain.”
Verdonkschot has good reason to be pleased. The eight-medal haul is the best showing for the U.S. at a World Rowing Cup event since 2013, during the 11-year undefeated streak of the women’s eight and following the men’s eight string of three Olympic medals. It’s also remarkable for what it didn’t include: eights. The U.S. didn’t enter a big boat for either the weak men’s event or the even weaker women’s—which featured only three crews. Five world best times were set at Varese, but the eights’ winning times were the furthest off of gold-standard times of any of the 14 Olympic events. Great Britain ruled the men’s sweep events, winning the pair, four, and eight. The best women’s eights—Romania and The Netherlands—took a pass on Varese, with the Dutch sending only a development squad.
“So I got a positive feeling about where we are, especially if you look at the events that we competed in,” said Verdonkschot. “So I think we can look at our targets now about qualifications and about medals. Eight would be a nice target, nine would be great.”
Per the published selection procedures—necessitated by lawsuits against USRowing every time the national governing body names the Olympic rowing team—the women’s pair of Alie Rusher and Megan Musnicki, the men’s double of Sorin Koszyk and Ben Davison, and single sculler Kara Kohler all earned spots on the U.S. National Team for September’s World Rowing Championships by virtue of having won April’s national selection regatta and performing well (basically by making the grand final) at the Varese World Rowing Cup. All seven athletes went to California Rowing Club after Varese to continue their preparations for worlds, and ultimately, the Olympics.
While the three boats that have already earned their places on the team have gone back to California Rowing Club, many of those who will make up the rest of the squad will be from CRC. The men’s four that won a bronze at Varese is three-quarters CRC oarsmen. Verdonkschot will select a final four line-up that might be same four oarsmen, or might have a change or two. The two athletes not selected to the four will join the group of about 16 being considered by Steve Gladsone for the men’s eight in the first week of final selection camp.
All six of the CRC oarsmen in last year’s fourth-place U.S. eight were invited to the final selection camp, as were CRC’s Justin Best and Michael Grady, who won the petite final as the U.S. at last year’s worlds. The top 11 pairs and five eights at this year’s worlds will qualify for the Olympics. In total, 12 of 32 male invitees to the selection camp are officially from Californa Rowing Club, while others like Yale’s Nick Rusher and Brown/Cal oarsman Gus Rodriguez have trained there.
CRC operates out of the Ebright Boathouse the T. Gary Rogers Rowing Center, home of the University of California, Berkeley crew. Former U.S. Olympic coaches Mike Teti and Tim McLaren, along with Skip Kielt coach a small group of aspiring rowers at what has become the de facto men’s Olympic training center following the Tokyo Games when USRowing neither retained Teti nor gave any clear plan for elite rowers for the year until Verdonkschot came to the U.S.
“You really got to credit the Rogers family because after everything kind of shut down they said ‘Hey, let’s keep it going’ and these guys all wanted to come and they stayed so it was good,” said Teti
“We’re trying to help these guys achieve their dreams. That’s what Gary Rogers’ whole reason for starting the club, like he used to always say to me is ‘What I’m supporting is the dream.’”
The late Gary Rogers was a Cal oarsman who tried to represent the U.S. in the 1964 Olympics in the four.
“They were having a hard time. They couldn’t get a coach. They didn’t have a place to row and they didn’t have a boat,” said Mike Teti. “So Gary swore that like, if at some point he was a person of means, he would support anyone that wanted to try out for the team, supporting the dream.”
The Rogers family has continued to support the California Rowing Club following the successful entrepreneur and philathropist’s death in 2017.
Among those not selected for the eight could be enough oarsmen who can scull to put together a competitive quad, to be coached by Kris Korzeniowski. Only the top seven quads at this year’s worlds qualify for the Paris Games, with two more Olympic spots up for grabs at next summer’s aptly-named Final Qualification Regatta. The men’s pair and single will be determined at the trials at the conclusion of the camp.
On the women’s side, Sophia Vitas and Kristi Wagner have already been selected to be the double on the strength of their World Rowing Cup performance, missing victory by seven one-hundredths of a second, but have to go through the trial since they did not win the April NSR. They also finished seventh the quad in Varese, doubling up with the other U.S. women’s double entry of Emily Kallfelz and Lauren O’Connor, who were fifth and join the pool of athletes at final selection camp, with the quad to be selected by Guenter Beutter.
The women’s four of Molly Bruggeman, Kelsey Reelick, Madeleine Wanamaker, and Claire Collins set a world best time in winning the Varese World Rowing Cup and won’t face further selection, according to Verdonkschot. “Well, I mean, they’re the best in the world.”
Verdonkschot wanted Princeton coach Lori Dauphiny or Washington coach Yaz Farooq to coach the women’s eight, but neither were available this summer, so Jesse Foglia, head coach of the USRowing Training Center–Princeton, will handle the duty.
Since being hired by USRowing in December of 2021, Verdonkschot has done it his way, developing world-class sculling and small boats from the remains of the medal-less Olympic and victory-less worlds U.S. National Teams of the last two years. It’s a stark departure from the eights-first approach to not just Olympic, but practically all rowing in the U.S.
“A medal is a medal,” Verdonkschot has said repeatedly. “My job is to put the best athletes in the best positions to succeed.”
Verdonkschot’s lowest-hanging-fruit approach to winning Olympic medals by putting the top U.S. rowers in the weakest events seems to be coinciding with a slow period in international eights. With the exception of Great Britain’s continued dominance of men’s sweep rowing and fast women’s eights from The Netherlands and Romania, the eights fields have little speed and no depth. Defending Olympic women’s eight champion Canada has been adrift since somehow not retaining the services of coach Michelle Darville (now with The Netherlands), and the Canadian men’s eight is also relatively slow. Both finished out of the medals in the final-only, slowest Olympic event at the Varese World Rowing Cup.
Verdonkschot’s strategy, California Rowing Club’s continued development of elite rowers, and weak eights fields have come together at the right time for the U.S. to qualify at least eight boats and win medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“We cannot presume that everybody stands still,” warned Verdonkschot, “but we also have to presume that we will get better in the final preparation.”
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