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Team USA defeated an all-star world team to win the Lenny Peters Cup at the Bethany Medical North Carolina State Rowing Championships in High Point, N.C., on Saturday, April 18.
Created as a Ryder Cup-style contest to add interest to the regatta, this year’s edition featured Olympians on both squads, as Team USA avenged last year’s narrow defeat to win all but two races in hot, sunny conditions on Oak Hollow Lake.
“It’s cool to be walking around and have high schoolers know me by name, saying they’re going to watch racing, and that they’ve been following results since last year,” said U.S. Olympic sculler Grace Joyce, who defeated Brazil’s Beatriz Tavares in singles competition before falling to a world team mixed quad later in the program. “It’s very special.”
“We were doing some pretty nice regional regattas before Covid, when we lost most of our teams,” said regatta director Gene Kininmonth, who is also the head coach of local club Triad United and founded High Point Rowing Club in 2012.
“We realized we’re going to have to have a new revenue source, and so we looked at regattas for doing that. We went big, coming out of Covid, and we’ve just put our heart and soul into it.”
With the support of Lenny Peters, a physician and philanthropist, Kininmouth, a former Australian national team oarsman, introduced the Team USA-versus-the world concept, added VIP amenities for spectators, produced a nine-camera video livestream, and, this year, sold out entries for the overall regatta that includes youth, collegiate, and masters events.
“We’ve gone as high end as we can, and it’s paying off,” Kininmouth said.
“This is a good way for us to give the athletes a little change of scenery, and it’s a great way also to promote rowing,” said Josy Verdonkschot, The McLane Family Chief High Performance Officer for USRowing. “It’s a huge regatta, it’s a nice setup, and everything is well arranged for the athletes.”
Verdonkschot, along with USRowing’s high-performance sculling coach Fiona Bourke and team manager Will Daly, brought the eight members of Team USA and a fleet of shells to share with the world team.
“It’s awesome—a nice atmosphere and a well-organized competition,” said Nicholaj Pimenov, who won the Lucerne World Rowing Cup and silver at worlds last year for Serbia with Cal alum Martin Mackovic, who also raced in the Lenny Peters Cup. “It’s not a World Rowing event, it’s even better. You can enjoy rowing.”
Pimenov and Mackovic defeated Team USA’s Jacob Plihal and Caleb Nollenberger in the men’s double and later won in the mixed-quad race against Team USA.
“It’s good to have little challenges like this,” Verdonkschot said, “because otherwise it’s just boring training.”
“It was super fun to see where in my race plan I need to improve and what’s going well,” Joyce said. “It’s the first time ever I’ve seen my name and face on a banner. I’ll be trying to take that home with me.”
