Week 1: Go long. Head out for extended rows at low stroke rates and with firm pressure on the paddle. Rowing at a rate of 24 or lower helps engrain movements and makes it easier to make technical adjustments.

Week 2:  Focus on controlling the recovery and perfecting the proper sequence. This begins with the hands coming away, and then the knees rise, the back swings to the correct body-over position, the hands roll the blade square, and the blade is dropped into the water with slight lift from the shoulders.

Week 3: Shift your attention to the drive, initiating this phase of the stroke with the legs and accelerating throughout. Be sure not to begin the drive with the arms or back. The legs are stronger. The arms and back should be transferring the power of the legs to the blade.

Week 4: Clean up your release. As the hands approach the chest, continue to pull strongly until near the chest, then push down with the outside hand, feather, and relax your shoulders and arms.

Week 5: Revisit the subtle movements of the stroke through the catch, finish, and release.

Week 6: Get race-ready. Practice racing starts and shifts to body pace. Incorporate power 10s, short bursts, and the finish sprint.

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World Rowing Cup I
Great Britain picked up where it left off at the first World Rowing Cup of this nascent Olympic cycle May 5-7 in Serbia. Team GB, which finished atop the medals table at last summer’s Olympics, was the overall points winner at the series opener, collecting a total 60 points to the Netherlands’ 47 and Poland’s 36. In all, Great Britain picked up 11 medals in 14 events, but was dealt a blow in the men’s eight when a surging Dutch crew rowed through them for gold. Dutch rowers earned an impressive eight medals overall at the regatta, with Poland nabbing seven to kick off the international season. Swiss scullers ruled the open singles events, with Jeannine Gmelin taking the women’s single and Nico Stahlberg prevailing over Rio silver medalist Damir Martin on the men’s side. The World Rowing Cup series was launched in 1997 and consists of a series of three events. The overall World Rowing Cup winners are determined after the third event. The remaining two stages this year take place in Poznan, Poland, June 16-18, and Lucerne, Switzerland, July 7-9.

saratoga invitational
Thousand of athletes from 63 teams came to Saratoga, New York’s Fish Creek to race 1,329 boats with 7,434 total racing seats in the Saratoga Invitational, April 29-30, making the juniors-only regatta as big as the major fall head races. Saratoga’s special sauce is its 10-lane 1,500-meter course. “With 10 lanes, instead of five, six-boat races, we can do three heats and 270 kids get to race in 24 minutes,” explained regatta director Chris Chase. “We do six or seven regattas a year, depending on the year, and we realized it’s a hardship for teams to come for three days, between being out of school, hotels, feeding them, and buses. Something had to give and our water is pretty equally fair and wide enough to put 10 lanes in and still have a warm-up lane. So for us, we can have a three-day regatta in two days because of the course. It cut costs.” “Ten lanes—go big or go home!” enthused PNRA/Mercer director of rowing Justin Ochal, whose crews did well across the 37 events they entered. “Every boat that’s entered gets raced. It doesn’t matter what the conditions are, you’ve got 10 lanes out there.”The regatta featured fast racing in addition to huge participation, with defending national champion Saugatuck besting Cincinnati Juniors and Greenwich Crew in the women’s varsity eight final. In the men’s varsity eight final, Cincinnati Juniors edged Community Rowing, Inc. and PNRA/Mercer, with all three crews within 1.2 seconds. New Canaan’s Claire Campbell won the women’s single, with Saratoga’s Emory Sammons the top male single sculler.

EARC Eastern Sprints
The Cornell lightweight varsity and Yale heavyweight varsity each survived a late-race charge from Harvard to win their respective championships at the EARC Eastern Sprints, Sunday May 14 on a windy, rainy Lake Quinnsigamond in Worcester, Massachusetts. For the Big Red, the championship marked a third perfect regular season and Sprints win in the past four years. For Yale, the win was a successful defense of last year’s championship with mostly the same athletes, but this year was different, according to coach Steve Gladstone, “There was a whole different narrative. We went with the same lineup from San Diego. We just needed a bit of a shift. Everybody in that boat, with the exception of Tom Digby, have won it and a lot of the guys have won it twice. There’s a level of confidence that allows people to reach their best performance at times like this.” For lightweight coach Chris Kerber, adding yet another undefeated season and Sprints title to Cornell’s remarkable history results from sticking to the plan. “For us it’s a day in and day out commitment to what we’re doing. They’re a spectacular group of athletes to work with, my fastest eight by far, ever,” said Kerber. “Just keeping coal in the belly of that train,” will be the key to continued success at the IRA.  

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But times, and tastes, change. And when it came to choosing between long-overdue gender parity and preserving an event that, however exciting, failed to meaningfully increase universality, the decision was clear.

Many didn’t see it that way. In the days that followed the FISA Extraordinary Congress, my Facebook feed was overrun with posts decrying all that was lost with the decision. None, however, considered what was gained.
For one, the change likely strengthened rowing’s position in the eyes of the International Olympic committee, which in the Agenda 2020 era, is a good thing. But more importantly, there are now four additional seats for women’s sweep.
I think back to what it was like when I learned that lightweights could race at the Olympics, and I can’t help but feel there are athletes out there who look at the increased opportunity in the same way.
As for lightweight sweep, I am less hopeful. It’s hard to argue we’re better off today than before the start of this Olympic experiment. But traditions run deep in this sport, and like the women’s four, there’s no ruling out a comeback.

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