The Olympic rowing gold, silver, and bronze medals won by the men’s four, PR3 mixed coxed four, and men’s eight, respectively, highlighted U.S. National Team racing in Paris but fell short of USRowing’s stated goal of four total medals, and well short of expectations, which were as high as 10 medals leading into the Olympic and Paralympic regattas.
“We’re proud of our athletes’ performance in Paris, and the overall results signify a critical turning point for our high-performance program,” said USRowing CEO Amanda Kraus. “The three medals earned, and improved finishes across six additional boats, indicate that we’ve made significant progress since Tokyo 2020,” when U.S. crews failed to win a single medal.
“Beyond the medals, we qualified the most Olympic boats since 2012 (12 of 14 Olympic events), all women’s boats qualified for a fifth consecutive Olympics, eight boats qualified for the A finals (the most since 2000), and with a gold and a bronze, it’s the best medal results for men’s boats since LA 1984,” Kraus continued.
She’s right about U.S. crews earning spots at the Olympics and reaching the A finals more often than not. In this, the qualification age, the fact that countries must earn one of the limited spots in the Olympic regatta (further reduced after London 2012 and again after Rio 2016) has turned international rowing into a small pond with a few big fish. At the Olympics, where half the remaining events are limited to nine or fewer entries, making a six-boat A final is statistically likely, while just making it to the Games is a real accomplishment.
“We made a nice first step,” said USRowing’s chief high performance officer, Josy Verdonkschot, who intends to remain in his position. “I enjoy what I do. As long as people believe in what I’m doing, I’ll continue.”
The U.S. has managed to join the battle with the elite few countries that win Olympic medals but struggles in competition against the current best. Just three countries—The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Romania—combined to win nine of the 14 golds, and 21 of the 42 medals awarded at the Paris Olympics.
Great Britain dominated the Paralympic regatta, winning three of the five events, and taking silver in a fourth. The U.S. is one of five countries to win two Olympic medals, and one of nine to have won a Paralympic medal in Paris. Canada’s lone medal was the silver in the women’s eight.
The top European performers are essentially professional athletes, training full-time with government support, including health care, while U.S. rowers rely on stipends and charity, mostly treating Olympic rowing as something they do after college and before getting on with the rest of their lives.
The Romanian men’s gold-medal double of Marian Florian Enache and Andrei Sebastian Cornea have been racing internationally for 12 and eight years, respectively. The Dutch women’s pair of Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester, who also won gold, made their first senior national team in 2017 and raced in 32 international elite regattas, including Olympics, before Paris. Of the 42 rowers on the U.S. Olympic squad in Paris, 25 were appearing at their first Games.
Money—specifically, a shortage of it—is “definitely” part of it, said Stephen Hap Whelpley, chair of USRowing’s High Performance Committee. “It’s still a challenging situation.”
USRowing lacks a major commercial sponsor, although numerous smaller ones support the association. Charitable giving from the National Rowing Foundation exceeded $2.5 million for the Paris quadrennium, and in the lead-up to the Games, the USRowing Foundation, which operates in roughly the same space as the NRF, announced gifts totaling over a million dollars. In October, USRowing announced a $1 million gift made by Katie and Bill McNabb, the USRowing Foundation chair, in support of the LA 2028 Olympic and Paralympic efforts.
USRowing hired Verdonkschot from Europe as the Olympic and National Team boss to change how the U.S. prepares for and competes at the highest level. By virtue of winning Olympic medals, it’s been a success, but the stated desire to get American rowers to scull and row small boats as proficiently as their international rivals is yet to be realized.
The Olympic and Paralympic medals all came from sweep-rowing big boats—fours and eights. At the 2024 under-19, under-23, and senior World Rowing Championships held on the Canadian Henley course in St. Catherines, all but one of the medals won by the U.S. were in big boats, and all but one of the medals came from sweep-rowing events. The U23 lightweight men’s pair and senior lightweight men’s quad won silver medals, but the rest of 10 medals all came from fours and eights.
The United States is a nation of eights, and some fours. Three of the four collegiate varsity national championships are decided by the varsity eight alone, and all three divisions of the NCAA championships are decided by points scored exclusively in eights and fours. At the American Collegiate Rowing Association, USRowing Youth National Championships, and pretty much every other student-athlete regatta, the premier events are the eights. When American kids dream of making the National Team, it’s in the eight.
Verdonkschot has some ideas for changing that, including making Youth Nationals the qualifier for certain U19 National Team boats or selection-camp spots. Speed orders, on the senior and Olympic level, are already singles and pairs races, and results figure prominently in who gets invited to selection camp. But once there, athletes are put into the boats they’re most likely to make fastest, rather than just priority boats, which explains this summer’s sweep big-boat successes.
USRowing’s attention, like that of much of the rest of the rowing world, now turns to Beach Sprints, as the new form of rowing makes its Olympic debut in LA28, replacing the lightweight events. In September, Verdonkschot and other upper-level staff members of USRowing were in Genoa, Italy, for the hastily relocated World Rowing Coastal Championships and World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals—two separate events held on consecutive weekends in the same place.
Break dancing’s infamous debut at the Paris Games isn’t the reason it’s one-and-done as an Olympic sport—LA28 hadn’t planned on including it even before this summer—but it’s still a cautionary tale of how easily a sport, especially a new one with a limited base, can be left out of the Olympics.
The flip side of the exciting break-zone crashes and pileups of Beach Sprints is the potential for injury, possibly serious or even fatal. USRowing officials know they have to thread the needle of developing this new version of rowing in time for the LA Olympics while also avoiding accidents that could be fatal—to both a participant and the sport.
One thing the national governing body can’t do as it prepares for a home Olympics with higher expectations—at least one more medal than Paris from rowing, per Verdonkschot—is to stand still. Despite falling short of its goals, for a second consecutive Olympics, Kraus believes that USRowing still has the same support from the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
“We don’t foresee the results in Paris negatively impacting funding from them in 2025.”
