Lightweight Entries at Worlds

I like to look at lightweight entries at Worlds every year as another check on the health of women's lightweight rowing. There are three events for lightweight women - the 2x (the Olympic event), the 1x, and the 4x. This year both the 2x and the 1x have more entries than last, while the 4x has one fewer. Only four events have more entries than the LW2x (22, the same as the heavy women's 1x and LM4-), and they are all mens'. The LW1x has 21 entries, seventh in popularity. The LW4x is farther down the list with only six entries, although the LM4x has five and the heavy women's 4x has eight highlighting the lower popularity of that boat class (the heavy men have fifteen). It's interesting to note that the light women and light men both have a slightly higher percentage of entries than events, while the heavy men and women are the opposite. I don't know how meaningful that is but I'll take it as a sign that demand for lightweight events is relatively strong.

I think this kind of indicator is important because if demand remains high internationally, FISA will look favorably on lightweight events. If FISA looks favorably on lightweight events they stay in the Olympics and remain a medal winning opportunity for the US. If they remain a medal winning opportunity for the US, USOC and therefore USRowing will see lightweight rowing as worth developing. That can only be good for collegiate lightweights. As the USOC and USRowing continue to emphasize number of medals, a WL2x gold is just as valuable as a M8+. This kind of thinking has resulted in the mens' priority boat being the 4- this year, not the eight (i.e. let's see if we can win in a smaller boat and then spread around those 8+ rowers). It's kind of like a team championship, isn't it? The country with the most medals wins, except there are no extra points for eights. Hmmm, the LW2x just as valuable as the M8+? That's not very NCAA like, but that might be where the USOC is headed.

Lightweight 1x Trial

There's a great story on row2k about the last race of the lightweight 1x trial which concluded last Saturday. It's just so, well, "lightweight." Early morning weigh-in followed by a launch from an empty dock. Almost no one was there except the two rowers and the officials. The trials for the other boat classes had already concluded as the lightweight 1x went to three races. "...in the single on a morning like this, after the starter calls 'Attention, go,' the competitors will row side by side for over a mile without hearing another human voice."

At the end of this race one athlete was on the national team and the other went home. They wished each other good luck at the start and shook hands over the gunwhales at the finish. Unlike so many crews these days who stand in boats, hold up oars, and jump into the water or each other's arms, these two lightweight women won and lost with dignity. They showed respect for each other and for the sport. I have yet to see a winning women's lightweight crew make fools of themselves when they win and I hope I never do. Let others hug and salute themselves and act like they've never won before, while lightweight women win with class. That is what rowing is all about.

Badger Makes National Team

Despite what I said below about how few national team members come from the top lightweight teams, Katie Sweet, who graduated from Wisconsin in 2005, made the national team in the lightweight quad this morning. (A reader beat me to this post with a comment a few minutes ago.) Needless to say, this is a tremendous achievement and given how we've seen the quality of lightweight rowing rise in the past year, I hope Katie is in the vanguard of an assault on the national team by rowers who rowed lightweight in college.

FISA Says Lightweights Rock!

Well, not exactly, but in a roundup of recent sports honors from around the world, a FISA report noted that lightweights (including men) won 7 of the 13 awards covered. Melanie Kok, a rower at the University of Virginia, was a member of Canada's world champion lightweight quad which won the Rowing Canada Aviron International Achievement Award. This is particularly interesting because UVa is usually seen as a "meat" program. Maybe that reputation is undeserved or maybe Melanie is the outstanding exception that proves the rule. Either way, it makes one wonder where the US lightweight national team members come from - the major collegiate lightweight programs, occasional lightweight programs, or smaller heavyweight programs. A quick look at last year's 7 national team members reveals their college teams to be Simmons, St. Joe's, Vermont, Cal, UCSD, George Mason, and Emory. As best I can tell, there are only two or three that frequently row lightweight (St. Joe's, UCSD, and Emory), and none with a dedicated lightweight program. The Cal rower, Julie Nichols, rowed as a heavyweight. I would have expected to see some representation from Wisconsin, Radcliffe, Princeton, Stanford, or Georgetown. The national heavyweight powers usually seem to be well represented on the national team, why not the lightweights? Of course, there are so few lightweight slots that any one year could give a distorted view.

This also suggests that there are a lot of good lightweights in smaller programs rowing as heavyweights. Perhaps if coaches weren't so fixated on heavyweights they would realize that they could boat nationally competitive lightweight boats instead of regionally competitive heavyweight boats. Maybe the problem is no lightweight events. As I go through results for the past couple of years to see how many schools row lightweight, it seems clear that many row heavyweight as a matter of course, but always enter a lightweight boat when there is a lightweight event. Regatta organizers would no doubt say that they would offer lightweight events if there was demand. It's hard to train and race a lightweight boat, though, when you never know if there will be an event for it.

Speaking of the national team, by now you've seen the USRowing yearbook. It was disappointing that of 9 color pictures of the US senior national team, the silver medal winning lightweight 2x was in none. Their only picture was as a watermark on the background of a page of text. What's a girl gotta do...? (There are some good shots of Wisco, though.)