S5E40: HOCR 2024 - Coastal Rowing Champs Bak, Rogers & Choi

Ready, Row! USA

Bak, Choi, Rogers - Transcript

• 2023 Won COPA America Mixed 4x
• 2022 Bronze at Beach Sprint Worlds for Mixed 4x
• 2021 Tokyo Paralympic PR3 Mixed 4+ Alternate

Chris Bak

• 2021 Portugal-1x 8th BS
• 2022 wales 1x gold 4x bronze BS
• 2023 Barletta- 1x 8th BS 1x silver ENDURO 2x gold ENDURO
• 2024 Genoa- 1x gold

Kory Rogers

• 4x coastal national team
• 2x world champion, youngest in 2023 senior level worlds
• 1x bronze medalist
• Bali continental qualifier USOPC (Olympic committee event)

Host, Napoleon Griffin: Alright, welcome back! We're at the Head of the Charles Regatta, 2024, day three. I'm pleased to have my last guests with me. I'd like them to introduce themselves, going from left to right.

"Hey guys, my name is Kory Rogers."
"I'm Chris Bak, nice to meet you."
"And I'm Peter Choi, nice to meet you."

Alright, thank you all. So, we're here at a rowing event on the water, but you guys aren't doing what most people think of when they think of rowing. What do you do?

"We all do coastal rowing. Peter's our coxswain."

For those who don't know what coastal rowing is, can you explain it?

"Coastal rowing is a really dynamic side of the sport. In traditional flat water rowing, you see more 2k or 5k races, like here at the Head of the Charles. For coastal, we do have 4k and 6k racing, which is on the endurance side. But we also have a cool type of racing called beach sprints, which is now in the 2028 Olympics. It's a 500-meter format with some slalom. It's a much shorter, more dynamic race out on the open ocean."

Now, having lived in Puerto Rico, I know coastal rowing takes place in the ocean, and I'm not a fan of that! Flipping is not an option, considering you have things waiting for you in the water. You could become a snack if you don't do well! So, talk about how the race starts before you actually get in the boat. For those who are not aware of coastal rowing, they might think you have stake boats like you would in a regular flat water race, but that's not the case. So how is it set up?

Types of Coastal Rowing

"Good question. There are actually two different types of coastal rowing. The Olympic discipline for LA that Chris mentioned is called beach sprints. If you're in a smaller boat, a single or a double, one of the athletes starts at the archway at the starting line. There's a rope on the sand, and when the buzzer goes off, you sprint anywhere from 50 to 80 meters. In the case of a quad, it'd be the coxswain who sprints. Then you have to jump into the boat and slalom around three buoys and then make your way back. The bow person jumps out and then has to go back to the start line and hit a big red button. It's very action-packed. I like to say it's kind of like the BMX to mountain biking, or the velodrome to rough and tumble cycling.

For the Coastal World Championships, the long-distance event, there are variations, but the one I've seen the most is usually a cluster of people kind of waiting, and there's three balls that designate one-minute starting times. So three balls means three minutes. One drops, the second one drops, the last one drops, and then the buzzer goes, and then there really are no lanes. It's like head racing without the stagger. So 20 to 40 boats all kind of converge towards that first buoy. There's a lot of contact."

"When people say rowing's not a contact sport, they're not thinking about coastal rowing!"

That's interesting. So, I would presume, coming from the world of track and field, you're not going to put your slowest runner at the bow of your boat. If you have a tight race, and your bow person can outrun the other bow person, you can move from bronze to gold, out of medal contention to being a gold medalist, just based on the run. So do you ever actually have races to figure out who's the fastest?

So, what happened in 2023?

Bak: "Oh yeah, yeah. In the endurance side... I'll let Kory talk about what happened in 2023."

"Chris and I did the double for the endurance race. We surprised ourselves leading the race for the first 3k, maybe even 4k. It was a 6k race. The person who was bowing, which was me, got confused because there were two buoys that looked very similar, and I went the wrong way. Thank God we had a built-up lead of maybe about a hundred meters or so. Chris starts looking over at second place, third place, fourth place, and they all start going somewhere else. I'm like, 'Nah, don't even worry about it, they're going the wrong way, let me steer.' And in the end, I was wrong! So we had to cut over really fast. Thank God we were still in front at the turn, but I mean, I probably added like 20, 30 seconds of extra sprint that we did not need to do. All of our built-up cushion was gone. We get passed in the last 150 meters of the row coming into the beach. We're down maybe two, two and a half boat lengths. And I'm like, 'Man, screw this, I'm getting out of the boat.' I jump out early and I beat the Swedish guy running. So a 27-minute race came down to the last second."

"He was a big man, huge. Probably 6'6", 220."

"Esco, if you're watching, we love you man. You're a crazy guy, hats off to you."

I remember seeing that. So, talk about the 500-meter course because some people are not, including myself, as familiar with it. How does it work?

"Imagine you're on any pristine, nice beach. You take where the water is coming in from, subtract about 50 to 80 meters, and that's where your start line is going to be. Then you have two flags. Sometimes they have you run around the flag, sometimes they don't, it just depends on the race. You pretty much learn that race day. The reason for that is it can change based off of the tide and conditions. There are three buoys, each placed about 60 to 80 meters apart. You sprint to the boat from the beach, you hit the water, you have to figure out where the boat is, where the oars are. There is a unique position in coastal rowing, in the beach sprint format, of boat handlers. In the past, we've had teammates, coaches, even random people off the side of the street or on the beach come in and hold our boats for us so they don't flop all over the place.

After you enter the boat, you're racing towards the first buoy. The first buoy is going to be off your port side. You have to pass the second buoy on your starboard side. At the very end, which is about 250 meters out from the beach, there is a turn buoy. So you have to do a 180-degree turn and then you race straight back to the beach as fast as you can. You jump out of the boat, sprint back onto the beach, run around the flag, and then eventually hit the buzzer."

The cox's perspective

From a coxswain's perspective, is it different in beach sprints or coastal rowing than it would be on flat water, doing a 2k or even a 5k here at the Charles?

"Yeah, definitely. I would just say it's a different shell. It's so much heavier. It's like 400 pounds, maybe even heavier. That's not the same as what you would normally row on the river. Even though it's heavy, it's made to withstand those crazy waves and conditions. Mother Nature is not a battle you can win against, it's someone you have to adapt to. It's like, are there waves coming? Is there wind coming? You have to make quick adjustments. There's no time for, 'On two, let's do this,' because the race is a little bit over two minutes.

The other thing that's interesting is that because it's ...