The U.S. Performance at U-23 Rowing World's

July 26, 2009

A Crit­i­cal Review of the Per­for­mance of the United States Team at the 2009 Under-​​23 World Row­ing Cham­pi­onships

Twenty-​​one crews rep­re­sented the United States at the 2009 Under-​​23 World Row­ing Cham­pi­onships that con­cluded yes­ter­day in Racice, Czech Repub­lic. Of these only three medaled. The U.S. won sil­ver medals in the men’s four, light­weight women’s quadru­ple sculls and women’s eight on Sun­day, the lone high­lights of a gen­er­ally unsat­is­fac­tory final day of racing.

All of the crews and their coaches were self-​​funded; USRow­ing, the sport’s national gov­ern­ing body, did not cover their travel, lodg­ing or boat rental costs. All the crews had won selec­tion tri­als races a few weeks ear­lier to earn the right to com­pete at these cham­pi­onships. In sev­eral cases the “win­ning” boat was uncon­tested. There were no time stan­dards to be met for these boats to rep­re­sent the United States.  Per­haps as a result, the USA was barely com­bat­ive in the pre­lim­i­nary heats with many boats plac­ing last or next to last. Is it rea­son­able to expect that the ath­letes really gained the type of inter­na­tional expe­ri­ence needed to pro­duce future suc­cess at the senior world cham­pi­onships and Olympic Games? Is the sys­tem set up to develop the best tal­ent for future suc­cess, or is it merely iden­ti­fy­ing those indi­vid­u­als for­tu­nate, or deter­mined, enough to pay their own way? Can this sys­tem ensure the longevity in the sport of these ath­letes, or, now they’ve had their taste of inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tion will they decide to enter the gen­eral work­force after grad­u­at­ing col­lege –  to repay their col­lege and row­ing loans and start build­ing families?

Until USRow­ing fig­ures out how to prop­erly sup­port and fund its devel­op­ing row­ers, we will con­tinue to have only very few elite level ath­letes, and most of those will be able to expe­ri­ence only one Olympic cycle before seek­ing bet­ter ways to earn their liv­ings. Moti­va­tion may be the great­est way to drive improve­ment, but moti­va­tion alone is not enough; it needs to be accom­pa­nied by tan­gi­ble sup­port. Why would a rower train hard if he or she can make the national team by sim­ply show­ing up at tri­als with some tal­ent and an enlarged over­draft or their par­ents’ credit card? Maybe he or she would train harder and with more focus if they knew that upon the achieve­ment of cer­tain per­for­mance stan­dards the sys­tem would place value on his or her efforts and sup­port their devel­op­ment into an elite ath­lete. The more peo­ple that get sim­i­larly encour­aged and sup­ported, the bet­ter U.S. row­ing can become.

The under-​​23 cham­pi­onship is meant to be a devel­op­ment regatta — a tran­si­tional step from the junior national team to the Olympic team. It is not meant to be an end unto itself. Unless there is more struc­ture and sup­port, row­ing in the United States can expect to reap at best min­i­mal ben­e­fit from its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the 2009 Under-​​23 World Row­ing Championships