United States Completes World Championship Selection

The men’s eight comfortably qualified for the Champs
© Sybrand Treffers

The United States national team trials are an open slate. Anyone can challenge to be the representative boat at the World Championships and a variety of clubs, mainly from the east coast, turned out for the regatta held in Princeton, New Jersey.

The selection process started last Friday with each crew required to win their event to advance. The winner was then given the opportunity to race against a pre-determined time standard. All but one crew met the criteria.

Lisa Schlenker qualified with the largest margin in the lightweight single. She finished in 7.35 giving her 30 seconds to spare. The women’s eight, who recently won at the Canadian Henley, also finished with a healthy margin. Their time of 6.01 was 18 seconds faster than the required time. Steve Tucker easily won the lightweight men’s single and will go into the Championships having finished fourth at the 2002 World Cup Regatta in Munich. Unlike Tucker, a number of the selected team will be racing internationally for the first time at the World Championships.

The only boat not to qualify was the women’s lightweight pair. Their time of 7.41 was eight seconds too slow. This means the United States will enter boats in 23 of the 24 events at the World Championships held in Seville, Spain next month.

Athletes in Olympic events will be fully funded while those in non-Olympic events will have to pay US$ 3,300 to attend the Championships.

This completes the trials of all boat classes which began earlier this month when six of the small boat classes were chosen for the national team. The official announcement of the complete squad will be released next week.