RowingRelated

Nick Trojan's latest feature documentary is twice as long as his previous work—but leaves you wanting more, just the same.  There’s a new feature in Nick Trojan’s series, taking an inside look at top-tier college rowing programs in the US. This time, Trojan focused his project on Yale and the legendary coach Steve Gladstone, blending outstanding camerawork with one of rowing’s most compelling stories.  Having uploaded the video to YouTube only two weeks ago, it’s already approaching 70k views. And for good reason.  RR sat down recently to talk through it all with Trojan in an exclusive interview, from origins to development and finally a finished product—as well as what might come next. Here’s what we learned. Navigating shifting waters Elite rower turned filmmaker Nick Trojan’s new feature, titled simply, “Yale Men’s Rowing,” was years in the making.  “The initial idea was to do the same kind of rinse-and-repeat that we had done with Harvard and Cal,” Trojan says, “...

Yale on the podium at the 2018 IRA Regatta (Photo © Joel Furtek) He's the winningest coach at the IRA Regatta in the modern era. He's coached multiple world champions and Olympic medalists. And, Steve Gladstone may be the only coach—in any sport—to win national championships with three different schools (four, if you include the 'de facto' titles he won with the Harvard Lightweights across four straight undefeated seasons). Here, he looks back on the 2018 season, how he approaches his work, and what drives him every day. Bryan Kitch: It seems like it has just been historic event after historic event. I'm just curious about the way you felt going into this season, the momentum you felt you had in the program, and maybe how your athletes maintained a hunger despite having proved a lot last year—how did they maintain that edge and want to come back for more? Steve Gladstone: Well, you asked a couple of questions—maybe two or three questions [laughs], but I...

The RowingRelated Top 30 (Photo: 1899 Cornell Rowing Team) ROWING is a sport heavily steeped in history. It can boast some of the longest running traditions in contemporary sport, from the Doggett’s Coat & Badge , to Henley Royal Regatta , to the Boat Races of both the Oxford and Cambridge variety as well as that between Harvard and Yale. Learning from the best has always been one of our top priorities here on RR, and so here we look back at our picks for the Top 30 Rowing Coaches of All Time , in hopes of both appreciating those that have gone before as well as the excellence of our contemporaries. As with all ranking systems, it's not perfect, but it's a start—and the hope is that it will generate discussion not only about the past, but also about the future of our sport as we move further into the 21st century. Also note: There are regrettably few women in this list, but that is a reflection of a general, historical and present underrepresentation of women in...

National champions will be crowned at Lake Natoma (Photo: RR) We had to do it. While the NCAA Championships are now in the rearview (with our top five teams all finishing in...the top five), IRAs are just around the corner. Time to crank the banter up to 11.

Washington Huskies training in Seattle (Photo: B. Kitch) It's time for the 2016 Intercollegiate Rowing Association National Championship Regatta. Here's what we think is going to happen.

Our take on the rowing 2016 season, with championships looming It's hard to believe, but we are already nearly through another season of rowing at the collegiate level here stateside, and the competition is well and truly heating up. Here's our take on the season so far, with a view toward championship racing, just around the corner.

Yale launching for the Champ Eight at the 2015 Head Of The Charles (Photo: B. Kitch) This week's video offers an inside look at a training session with Steve Gladstone in the launch, as Yale goes through exercises and then some rate-building work in the fall of 2013. If you haven't seen it before, it's a fine example of technical rowing as Gladstone puts the crew through their paces; if you have seen it before, it's well worth a second look.

Rowing fans, it's time for Part Two of the 2015 RoRy Awards, celebrating the best athletes, coaches, and performances in intercollegiate rowing this year. And, there was no shortage of material for the RoRy Voting Committee to consider, not least of which were two unprecedented performances at IRAs and NCAAs last spring.

Yale on their way to winning the semifinal of the Ladies' Plate (Photo: RR Staff) This week's video comes to us from the banks of the Thames, and features some of the most outstanding performances from the 2015 Henley Royal Regatta, which wrapped up yesterday after nearly a week of top-notch racing.

This past weekend marked the renewal of the oldest rivalry in U.S. intercollegiate athletics, the annual grudge match on the water between Harvard and Yale .

The view from Conibear Shellhouse (Photo: B. Kitch) In large part, the 2015 IRA confirmed our suspicions. That is to say, when all was said and done, our preseason picks didn't look all that bad. But how they got there is a whole different story.

Pac-12 fans lining the shores of Lake Natoma (Photo: B. Kitch) This week's videos come to us from across the good ol' US of A, from the 2015 Pac-12 Rowing Championships in Sacramento, California, to the  Ivy League Rowing Championships , held on the Cooper River in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to the ACC Championships in South Carolina, to Big 12s in Tennessee.

This week's video comes to us from the still-wintry climes of the Northeast, where the Bulldogs of Yale took on  Brown  men's heavyweight crew over the weekend. The video, shot from the launch, may not have sound, but the result was a resounding early season victory for the visiting team on the Seekonk River (though the race was tighter than the times would indicate—the Bulldogs were leading by a length until a crab by Brown slowed the crew down in the final 200m).

Washington hoists the Pac-12 varsity eight trophy, 2014 (Photo: B. Kitch) The 2015 IRA field looks very familiar, though the power struggle at the top may just yield different results this time around. The margins were slimmer last season for the Washington Huskies, but the Ten Eyck results were just the same. Can anyone stop the Huskies this spring?

This week's videos come to us from Carnegie Lake, where the Princeton open women took on Yale last weekend, while the lightweight men battled Penn and Georgetown . The women's varsity eights race saw the Tigers take an early lead, and endure several strong moves by a very talented Yale crew to record a wire-to-wire victory—dealing the Bulldogs their first loss of this young season, and keeping the Eisenberg Cup in Princeton for another year.

This week's video comes to us from the U.S. version of the Thames River, which, fittingly, is host to the Harvard-Yale Regatta —America's most venerable intercollegiate competition. The Crimson lead the series by a significant margin, with 95 wins to Yale's 54 in the varsity eight event, and, most notably, Harvard's Harry Parker has been at the helm for some 45 of those victories (his personal record being 44-7 in the event, including victories in 13 of the last 14 seasons). The video includes a bit of history, as commentators Charlie Hamlin (Harvard alum & Olympian in the men's four in 1968) and Andy Card (Yale's varsity lightweight men's coach) provide some background on the coaching and the event. If history's not your thing, you can skip forward to the beginning of the four-mile race at roughly 12:45. Things have been quite hectic over the past few days, with article deadlines to meet for ROWING Magazine —look for a lengthy upcoming featur...

For the third straight week, our video focuses on the Charles River, but this time it's all about the visiting team. Yale entered as No. 12 to Harvard-Radcliffe's No. 7, but the Bulldog women's eight jumped out to an early lead that they refused to relinquish in tailwind conditions in Boston, with Northeastern trailing in third. The following day, Yale backed up their victory over the Black and White with a defeat of No. 9 Brown on the Housatonic—by nearly 10 seconds. It appears some reshuffling of the rankings is in order, as Will Porter's Yale squad is showing some familiar midseason speed and seems to be in great shape with the conference championships looming—but they weren't the only ones looking in top form.

Cal and Washington at the 2012 Pac-12 Championships (Photo: B. Kitch)  IRA Men 1. Washington Our top pick for 2013 is Washington. The Huskies are stacked, feature an Olympic silver medalist in Conlin McCabe , and recently showed that (despite their relative youth) they are nails, walking away from Cambridge on the Boat Race course (for more on that crew, click here ). At this point in time, UW boasts the best program top to bottom—they are loaded and will be hard to beat in any event. Still, there are new challenges for Washington: the departure of Luke McGee and the new freshman rule may make the frosh event an interesting one this year. 2. California If anyone is going to upset Washington in the varsity eight this year, Cal might just be the one to do it—the Golden Bears have great top-end speed. Led by a strong Serbian talent in Jovan Jovanovic (a sophomore who stroked the eight in the fall and is a Serbian U23 and junior national team member), fellow Serbians Igo...

Bears on the way to the line (Photo: B. Kitch) This weekend is likely to be one for the ages, with the California v. Washington dual at Redwood Shores, CA, SIRAs taking place in Oak Ridge, TN, the Yale heavyweights taking on Cornell in Ithaca for the Carnegie Cup, the No. 1 Virginia women attempting to defend their  ACC Championship title (having won 44 of the previous 48 races held at the last 12 ACC Championship regattas), and the Harvard men taking on Penn and a very strong squad from Navy , among many other intercollegiate match-ups. The Cal v. Washington dual pits two of the top four teams in the nation against one another on both the men's and women's sides, while SIRAs will see some of the top programs in the ACRA field go head-to-head in the men's and women's varsity eights. The Yale men are currently unbeaten in 2012, with sweeps over Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Penn–this weekend will prove perhaps the toughest test yet, though Cornell did n...

Tigers in action on Lake Carnegie this weekend in Princeton (Photo: B. Kitch) There is a ton of intercollegiate racing on the schedule for this weekend, with some of the nation's top teams going toe-to-toe on both coasts. The Stanford Invitational and Lake Natoma Invitational out west, pitting the No. 3 Cal men against No. 4 (tied with Princeton) Wisconsin in the varsity eight on Saturday morning, while on the women's side, Pac-12 powers No. 8 Cal and No. 9 Stanford will welcome non-conference rivals Brown, Wisconsin and Texas, among others. Meanwhile, in the Northeast, the No. 2 Harvard heavyweight men are set to take on No. 4 Princeton and MIT, while the Crimson lightweight squad will race MIT and Dartmouth in Boston. For a link to live, streaming coverage of the action in Boston, follow the link below beginning at 7am Eastern Daylight Time: http://client.stretchinternet.com/client/harvard.portal# On Lake Carnegie, the No. 5 Princeton women will be going head-to-hea...