The U.S. Olympic crew teams train in California and New Jersey, but for the rowers representing the U.S. at the Tokyo games, it’s really Massachusetts that’s the geographic center of the team. Eight members of the team — nearly a quarter of U.S. rowers at this year’s Olympics — call Massachusetts home, and even more of them grew into elite athletes while training on the Charles River in college.
And, for them, it’s been a taxing but fruitful year.
The pandemic hit close to home, with COVID-19 outbreaks on both the men’s and women’s crew teams. Social distancing meant no more training in the same boats. Plus, the postponement of the Games meant enduring the grueling pace of pre-Olympic training two years in a row.
After all that, Regina Salmons of Methuen said it was an emotional moment when her boat was told they’d be going to Tokyo.
“A lot of the girls started crying, and I just couldn’t stop smiling,” she told GBH News. “It didn't feel real. And I just haven't stopped smiling since.”
Salmons will be rowing in the women’s eight boat along with Rochester native Gia Doonan. The U.S. women’s eight has won gold in the last three Olympics and would set a new record for most consecutive gold medals in the event if they can pull it off again this year.
The Commonwealth is scattered across different men’s and women’s boats. Three U.S. rowers this year are from Weston: Conor Harrity, who’s rowing in the men’s eight, Cicely Madden in the women’s quadruple sculls boat and Kristina Wagner, who’s competing in women’s double sculls with Gevvie Stone of Newton. Alexander Richards of Watertown is also in the men’s eight boat and Andrew Reed of Wayland is in the men’s four.
Massachusetts is also home to rowers who are competing for other countries — like Dara Alizadeh for Bermuda and Jakub Buczek for Canada.
The rowers were focused on qualifying for the Games in the spring of 2020, when the qualifying events were canceled at the last minute. Some were literally on their way to qualifying races.
“We were in mid-air when they got canceled,” Stone told GBH News. “And by March of an Olympic year, it feels like the homestretch.”
But it wasn’t. When the Olympics were postponed a full year, the athletes were left to decide if they were willing to keep training.
“The Olympic year is more intense than any other year of the cycle, and it's hard to do it twice,” Stone said. “So this year definitely took a little bit more perseverance, a little bit more grit, and it really makes it even more exciting to be on this side of things.”
The year’s postponement was nothing, Stone added, compared to what many faced during the pandemic.
“And so I feel terrible complaining,” she said. “But it was still taxing in its own way for us.”
When the Games were cancelled, everyone was sent home from training camps, and Salmons said she spent weeks working out on a rowing machine in her parents’ Methuen living room. By mid-July, she was able to go back to the women’s training center in Princeton, N.J. But it wasn’t the same.
“Part of the issue was in order to come back to the training center, we had to figure out how to get singles for everyone, because we wouldn't be allowed to go in team boats,” Salmons said. “So all fall, we trained in one-person single boats.”
That change could actually benefit the U.S. rowers in Tokyo. As the crew coach at Belmont Hill School, Chris Richards coached two of the rowers competing this year — his son, Alexander, who’s in the four-man boat, and Reed, in the eight-man. The coach said the rowers learn a lot from being in a small boat.
“There's nothing like being in a single to figure out whether you actually can move a boat or not,” Chris Richards said.
The eight-man boat his son rows in is a so called “sweep” boat, meaning each rower has a single oar. Chris Richards said rowers can improve their boat skills by rowing in single sculls, which use two oars. In many of the countries racing in the Olympics, the coach said, rowers were introduced to the sport in sculls. But not in the U.S., where most only train with sweep rowing.
“And so [rowing in single sculls] was really, really great for them,” Chris Richards said. “And I think one of the reasons these boats are going as well as they are is because of the time they were able to spend in small boats.”
Even if it was good training, Salmons said she was glad when she could finally get back in the eight-woman boat in November.
“Oh, my God, it was amazing,” she said. “I'm not a single sculler. I love my friends, I love my teammates. I love rowing with other — and for other — people, you know? I love pulling for the girl in front of me and the girl behind me. So getting back in the boat was like the best thing ever. It felt like I could breathe again.”
Breathing again took some recovery time for several of Salmons’ teammates. Around a third to a half of the women’s team got COVID-19, she said.
U.S. Rowing won’t confirm how many members of the U.S. team were infected with COVID-19 because it’s personal medical information. But there was an outbreak on the men’s team in October as well.
Conor Harrity was one of the men who got COVID-19.
“We were fortunate that our cases were relatively minor and it certainly does reinforce how contagious coronavirus is,” Harrity told the Associated Press.
Three of Harrity’s roommates on the team, including Reed, were also infected.
“He was pretty sick,” Reed’s father, John, told GBH News. “He had fevers. He couldn’t row for three or four weeks.”
And that, he said, was stressful while training for the Olympics.
“When you’re in an endurance sport, to miss a month is just a terrible setback,” John Reed said.
But Andrew Reed worked his way back, beginning with a bike and moving to a rowing machine before getting back in a boat.
“And I would say by January he was back to his full-speed self,” his father said. “It’s just an honor that he made it, and we’re just thrilled for him.”
Now, Andrew Reed is in Tokyo, getting ready to compete. But his father still worries COVID-19 could prevent him from competing.
“There's still the risk of just being an asymptomatic positive and having to go into quarantine for 14 days while you’re over there,” he said.
Some of the Massachusetts rowers say there’s clearly an effort in Tokyo to keep that from happening.
Stone can see how this year’s Games are unlike past years: This is her third Olympics, after winning silver in 2016 in Rio.
“It's certainly different,” she said from Tokyo. “COVID makes everything different, with the masks and precautions and testing and distancing and making it a little bit harder to talk to people. That being said, the general feeling around the village, I would say, it's very similar to prior Olympics, despite the fact that everyone’s wearing masks.”
Stone said plexiglass has been installed between seats in the dining hall and that athletes are being discouraged from interacting too much.
“But people are definitely having conversations,” she said. “Because that's a big part of the Games ... the camaraderie and meeting people and being part of such a special community.”
Another major difference this year is the lack of spectators.
“I'm sad I won’t able to see other sports,” said Salmons, who’s at her first Olympics. “I’m mostly sad that my family won't be able to be here, after they've done so much for me.”
But she said the lack of fans cheering from the riverbanks shouldn’t impact how her team performs.
“We'll be OK," she said. “You know, we'll have our coxswain cheering for us. And that's all we really need.”
Both Salmons and Stone said it’s great to have so many people from Massachusetts with them on the team. Stone said there are a lot of reasons why Massachusetts has become so central to the U.S. rowing world.
“First of all, rowing is visible in the Boston area,” she said. “People driving on Storrow Drive see rowing. It's a sport that people are aware of. The Head of the Charles is a big event. And that's the first step, is just the awareness of rowing.”
And with so many schools and universities in the state, as well as clubs like Community Rowing, the sport is more accessible than in most other places.
“Everyone trains in the same body of water, and I think that when you're a junior rower training on the same river as someone who's going to the Olympics, it’s inspiring,” Stone said. “Actually seeing what these people do every day to get where they are, and knowing that they are people and not super-humans. I think the proximity and exposure strengthens the Boston rowing community. Once you're in it, people are incredible, and that goes a long way.”
