USA overcome the odds to crush at coastals

The first day of the 2022 World Rowing Coastal Championships featured plenty of drama – not least in the first heat of the coastal women’s quadruple sculls (CW4x+).

The race saw the two USA entries, both from Next Level Rowing, take out an early lead. But then for USA01 near-disaster struck.

“We popped out pretty quickly ahead and then right around that first buoy we were feeling it, I felt like we were just taking off,” explained two-seat Brooke Wolford.

“Then my oarlock opened up on the left side, my starboard oar went a little crazy. I caught the oar, and I pulled my oars in, and I put it back in. I couldn’t feel my left hand, but I was like ‘I need to get this locked before I start rowing again, because that’s the only way we’re going to get through this’,” Wolford added.

Oar safely recovered, Wolford and her crewmates raced on and eventually came in third behind ESP02 (RCN Torrevieja) and USA02 to book their place in Sunday’s A-Final.

While USA01’s stroke, Christine Cavallo, has some prior coastal experience – she won bronze in the mixed quadruple sculls at the 2021 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals – the rest of the boat are less experienced. Wolford and crewmate Danielle Hansen, for example, only stepped into a coastal rowing boat for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

“I feel like we’re really learning how to let go on the water – relax, stay calm in any circumstance,” Wolford said of the experience so far.

Hansen said just getting in the boat and starting from the beach – “entries” – had been the biggest challenge.

“Those are the hardest, and the thing we worked on the most. That ended up paying off a lot today,” she said.

Although it is Hansen’s first coastal experience, she is no stranger to big events. The two-time Paralympic Games mixed coxed four silver medallist has taken some time out from rowing since the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, and she revealed she had done a lot of meditation and tai chi in the past year.

“It’s really perfect for coming into this, because your mind has to be really calm, you have to be really relaxed, you can’t just allow the chaos of what’s happening around you to infiltrate your thoughts and infiltrate how you’re moving and everything like that,” Hansen said.

Ahead of Sunday’s final, USA01 have extra motivation to do well. While training in Ireland a week ago, Wolford received the tragic news that her father had passed away suddenly.

“I’m thinking about him a lot. I’m out here to give it my all and do it for the people I love the most. He’s kind of here with me,” she said.

That will drive Wolford and her crew on in the hunt for medals.

“People are out to crush. So are we,” she said.