The Torch

We made it back to Craftsbury. It has been both incredibly comforting and difficult settling back into life here at home. When I walked into my room I could remember exactly how I was feeling packing up to leave for Europe. To be back, knowing that the dream of rowing the quad at the Olympics is not possible anymore, is extremely difficult. It hurts me the fact that all the doubters about our boat ended up being right. Those guys don't have enough horsepower, they're too small, they are just the guys who couldn't make the sweep team, etc etc... We wanted so badly to make a quad that our rowing community would be proud of, a boat that showed that despite no funding and largely being ignored by our national governing body, Craftsbury could make an Olympic contender. I still believe we would have a shot at an Olympic medal, the problem is that so does every boat qualified for the event. No event is closer. Its tough to swallow that we won't have a chance to compete against those other crews in Rio. I truly believe that when rested, our quad, NZL, Canada, and Russia could all make the A final at the Olympics, but two of us won't be going. Russia will likely win gold in Rio.  They were producing speed that no one has seen in the quad before. 1:21, 2:47 to the 1k in flat water. We prepared to be a little bit down to them at the 1k, but not 4 seconds. That is absurd. They would have been right in the mix to qualify the 8 at the 1k. We thought we would be able to track them down in the second K but neither NZL or us got a chance to do that because we were already in Russia's wake. We bounced around the lane for 1000 m while Canada slipped away from us. The most heartbreaking way to lose is losing when you didn't put down your best performance. The best piece we laid down was the heat. We led NZL for every stroke but the last one and both crews negative splitted the second thousand, something we weren't able to do again throughout the week. After talking to the Kiwis, they agreed that was one of the toughest races they've ever been in. We went 5:43 in dead calm water and no one in our boat could move for several minutes after we crossed the line. That was as fast as we could go. We thought we recovered from that effort, but it was clear that we just weren't quite able to produce the same speed throughout the week. Even for our rep at WC 2, when we went stroke for stroke all the way down the course with the current World and Olympic champion Germans  , Poland, Lthuania, and Switzerland, we just did not have the same speed. It was very flat conditions and we went 5:48. The boat felt the best it has ever felt and we sprint like crazy, but it was missing some energy. Made sense considering it was our 5th 2k of the week. It was number 2 for everyone else. I was proud of the way we competed and raced at WC2, there were so many reasons why we shouldn't race, but we regrouped and went after it with everything we had.

All in all, this past week has taken quite a toll physically and emotionally. It's sad that we are no longer training in the quad, but there are two spots left on the 2016 Olympic team and I am not going to wait around and watch them be claimed, Peter and I are going to throw our hat in the ring and will be rowing the pair at Olympic Trials. We will train here in Craftsbury for the next week or so then move down to Princeton to get used to rowing in lanes. No idea if we will be able to get up to speed fast enough to be a contender at pair trials but I can promise that if we strike out, we will strike out swinging.