Richard Klein

July 22, 2006

Hobart rower Richard Klein '08 is a member of Team USA at the 2006 FISA Under 23 World Championships in Hazewinkel, Belgium. He is keeping Statesmen fans up-to-date on his experiences with a daily blog on the Colleges' Web site.

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July 15, 2006

Let me first introduce to you my teammates that I have been training with and traveled to Europe with. We will start with the stroke seat of the LM4X, Brian de Regt. He is from Rowayton, Conn., and is going to be a sophomore at Trinity College. He is the wild man in the boat who loves competition. No matter the situation, he won't let anyone out do him. There isn't anyone better for the stroke seat.

Three seat is Dan Feldman from Miami, Fla., who is going to be a sophomore at Columbia. Dan is the muscle of the boat, an ox trapped in a lightweight's body. He is more to himself then the rest of us, but during times of excitement, his calm behavior tames the rest of us.

Two seat, John Winter from New Haven, Conn., has just recently graduated from Lehigh with a mechanical engineering degree, and hopes to be a patent lawyer. John is the brains of the WHOLE operation, he has designed his own rigger and is trying to sell it to Vespoli. This man is great in the boat, because we know every pitch, height, nut and bolt will be perfect. He makes sure we get the most out of our boat.

Bow seat is me, Richard Klein from Westport, Conn. I'm going to be junior at Hobart College. I am majoring in computer science, and my main goal in the boat is to make weight for the other three guys.

If anyone of you have ever rowed lightweight before, you know that at most regattas it is every athletes weighs in at 160 or 155 pounds or under. Well at the World Championships it is a little bit different. All the athletes in the boat must average 70 kilograms, which is roughly 154.3 pounds, and the most an athlete can weigh is 72 kg, which is about 159.8 pounds. So this is what we weigh in at: Brian, 70.5 kg; Dan, 72 kg; John, 70.5 kg; Me, 67 kg.

Racing starts July 20, and goes until July 23. There are 41 U.S. athletes all staying in a hotel in Antwerp about 15 minutes north of the course. If you would like to find more information about the regatta, here are a bunch of links.

Row2k is a good Web site to find results and daily news about Worlds.

WorldRowing is the governing body for rowing. You can look at the regatta information and results.

Rowing is the official regatta Web site.

USRowing is the governing body for rowing in the United States, if you make your way to the national team section of the Web site, you can find information and athlete bios on all of us.

Now that I have gone through all the logistics, here is a quick view of how our 1st day went.

We arrived in Brussels, Belgium, at 8 a.m. after a seven hour flight with the whole load of oars and our bags. As we where walking out of the airport, everyone was giving us such awkward looks because we where caring around oars, but eventually a very familiar face to the sport, Princeton Lightweight Coach Greg Hughes snatched us and told us we were waiting for the rest of the U.S. team.

As a team, we made our way to the hotel in rented vans and USRowing forgot to get myself and John a room. The whole entire U.S. team had a room with two beds for two people, except for our boat; they said we had one room for four. So that didn't fly very long and we soon got a separate room to ourselves. We slowly made our way to the race course, taking many detours around Belgium to get there. The course was gorgeous, flat water, perfectly buoyed course, markers every 250, and racks for all the boats. But of course my stroke pointed out that it probably isn't the best sign that there are two windmill's about 500 past the start of the course. We were the only team there besides Japan, New Zealand (who had been there for six weeks), and Hong Kong. We ate lunch at a cafeteria which is overlooking the race course, while we waited for our boat to arrive at 3 p.m. from Germany. This was at noon.

So we relaxed at the race course, admired the surrounding area, played with a dog that could catch a stick if you threw it virtually every time! Four o'clock came, no boat. We called the German driver, and between the five of us we know English, Spanish, Gaelic, French, Latin, Pig Latin, and Italian, but no German. So after a little trouble we get out of him that he would be at the course at 6 p.m. So we go back to Antwerp and go into the city to avoid falling asleep at the hotel. We go back to the course after taking some scenic detours, and still no boat at 7 p.m. So we call the German driver, and he says he will be there in 30 minutes. So we go to the cafeteria and have dinner. As we are eating we see a trailer full of brand new Filippi's pull into the parking lot, and our German driver. We run out to the boats all excited, and out of maybe 20 brand new boats, our boat was the only unwrapped old boat. So we took the boat off and brought it over to the USA racks, and we started to work on it. If you have ever seen the movie Cool Runnings, the part when the Jamaican team got that old steel sled all fallen apart. Well that is exactly what our boat is like. On this old Filippi the shoes were all too small, there were parts missing everywhere, and the spreads were all messed up. It was just a complete mess!

If you ever think it has taken you long to rig a boat, we topped it. We did not stop rigging up this boat from 7:30-10:30 p.m. We had three or more people at all times doing something to the boat, whether it was checking the spread, finding shoes around the regatta that we could use, or changing the steering. But the more work we put into it, the more we loved the boat.

Team USA's Lightweight Men's Quadruple Sculls: Dan Feldman, Brian de Regt, John Winter, and Richard Klein.

So finally when we finished at 10:30—it was still light out—we went out on the water for a 4k row. It was beautiful with the sun setting, and the water as still flat as ice, and no one around for kilometers. To top of it off, the boat was great. It had such great send and just sat right up in the water. We left the course in its complete solitude to go "home" and rest up for day two of training.

July 16, 2006

Today, like yesterday, was a gorgeous day with lots of sun and the temperature around 90. The temperature seems to be getting higher every day; by Wednesday the temperature should be around 100, so we are staying cool and hydrated. The wind is also very consistent and affects every lane equally, so our worry of the windmills has been eased a little bit. It is always a cross head-to-head wind.

This morning was our first row with the boat rigged more to our needs. Our workout was 12k with five power 10s at race pace. For the first loop of 4k we were having a lot of set issues but as the practice went on we found a lot of balance and speed. On our last 4k we found ourselves next to the Japanese straight four. They were also doing 10s so we did them together. (lwt 4- and lwt 4x are the exact same speed, the world records are .22 apart.) We found ourselves walking away from them a little on every piece. So on our last 10 we thought it would be fun to take it at a 44 stroke rate, instead of the normal 36, and we completely walked away from Japan, so that was a confidence builder.

Between practices we just went back to the hotel and rested until practice again at 6 p.m. At six, we spent 30 minutes playing with rigging on the boat, to go out for an 8k row and some starts. The row went better than this morning's and we did half the practice on the square. The starts where sloppy but fast, so if we can just clean it up a little bit, we can have a very quick start. But besides that it was the basic routine of change some settings on the boat, row and change some more settings.

Since it was our last night with the rented car and fully paid gas, we thought it was only right to take it out for a spin in Antwerp. Antwerp is really a beautiful city, the diamond capital of the world. We parked the car at a parking garage, and just walked around. There were bistros everywhere, every building or at least every other building was a bistro that was packed with people. Maybe it wasn't a good thing that all five of us were wearing red shirts that said in big letters on the back "UNITED STATES ROWING" and USA on our hats and bags. So everywhere we went we were being haggled to go into nice bistros, when all we wanted were Belgium waffles. We finally found a little bistro that served desert, and we all ordered waffles with lots of toppings and water just before we had to start watching our diets for weigh-in. But little did we know that water had to be paid for and came in glass bottles. So we swore that the glass bottled water will give us extra boat speed and compensate for the waffles. After that we made our way back to the car and back to the hotel to rest up for another day of rowing in Belgium.

July 17, 2006

I am going to change the style of this "daily blog" a little bit. Instead of doing day-by-day, I am going to be doing everything from noon to noon. So today's will cover from the morning of July 17 to noon of July 18. But starting tomorrow I will be picking up from where I left off the day before.

Yesterday morning was our last hard workout before the big day this coming Thursday. It was two by 250 meters all-out. We did it into the head wind because that is what the race conditions will be like everyday. We checked our boat to make sure everything was set to standards, and then we went out for our race warm-up which is three power 15's, one at 32, one at 34-36, and the last one at 36-38. Then we did two starts to get the flow of some serious speed, and then we got to work on our first 250. We did both of them on a flying start. The first piece we flew off at 44 and would settle to around a 40.

"41 SECONDS!" We hear our coach yelling to us from his bike on shore, that was a good time that we are pulling for, that is a 1:22 500-meter split, which puts us right on track to break 6 minutes on a 2k (which is our goal).

We do the second piece almost identical except with a little stronger head wind and pull off a 42-second 250, which we were very pleased with.

Once we finished adjusting the boat after the row, we went to go weigh ourselves. For a few moments before hopping on the scale, we were all nervous since we hadn't stopped eating since we arrived. But all was clear, I weighed in at 67 kg, John at 70 kg, Dan 72 kg, and Brian at 69 kg. So to celebrate we went and had lunch!

Later that afternoon we came back to the course to do a light 8k paddle with starts, technique, and filming. It was an absolute great row. The best row our quad has ever had together. On our third and last start we just flew at a 50 stroke rate and topped any start we ever had. We also had a nice experience rowing on the course next to the French LWT 4x, and fortunately I can get around pretty well with the French I know. So both of our quads where docking at the same time, and the French coach asks the French rowers, "How did the American's look?" and they responded, "Powerful but nothing special." So we are thinking about renaming our boat the "Special Baguette." We headed home after that.

July 18, 2006

We no longer have private vans to go back and forth from the course to hotel, so we found ourselves on a coach bus provided by FISA with other athletes from Japan and Hong Kong, etc. Once we arrived at the course, we expected our usual countries, but maybe about 30 more countries showed up, and the world championships actually started looking like a world championship. All you see when you walk around are 6-foot tall lightweights, and 6-foot-2 and taller heavyweights. It is great to know that all around you are the most fit U23 athletes in the world. It is crazy that no matter how different and stereotypical one can be about other countries, it really seems that everyone here is almost the same and has the same goal in mind. Everyone has a uni-suit, water, and backpack at all times. It is a very professional atmosphere, but also you can just feel the tension in the air between all the countries, anticipating race time, and trying not to reveal their race strategies.

This morning was a 12k row with four power 10s and a few square blades. It went well. For the first 8k, we were sloppy and getting back what we had the night before. But the last 4k was absolutely great rowing, and we hope to keep replicating that. After practice, we went to go weigh in and once again made weight easily at: Me 66 kg, John 70.3 kg, Brian 69 kg, and Dan 72.3 kg. After weighing in, we ate lunch at the international cafeteria and headed back to the hotel for nap time.

Ciao!

July 18, 2006

Another hot and crazy day out on the course, except this time crazy might be an understatement. All of the countries have arrived and it is nothing less than spectacular with all the different dress styles and the number of people rushing around.

We went out on the water today for a nice 8k paddle around the course, but it wasn't one of those ordinary rows were you go up to the starting line and back down. This was a war zone.

Our coach gave us a few words of wisdom just before launching, "I'm not worried about what you are going to hit. It's what is going to hit you." And "You come first, then the USA, then every other country."

That really played out here. When we went up and down lanes, it was like a slalom course to avoid boats. When we turned, we had to cut off multiple boats, so they wouldn't cut us off. It was a really great experience and row, getting focus in that type of boat traffic is hard but we managed.

July 19, 2006

Today we woke up for what is to be the hottest day while we are here in Belgium, but thankfully there isn't any humidity so it is bearable. This heat is helping us lightweights with weight a lot, so that is a major plus. When we went down to the course after eating breakfast, we were all a little hesitant about making weight, but to our surprise we made average weight by 100 grams. So to celebrate, we ate! We got together to talk about our practice, and our coach informed us that this would be the last practice before our race tomorrow morning. The workout was 8k, two loops, with two racing starts, and two power 10's at race pace. We went out there and had a very solid row. For 2k, we found ourselves rowing in the lane next to Italy's lm4x, last year's champions. We were holding with them at steady state pressure, so we brought the stroke rate down two beats, and we were still sticking with the Italy quad. So that was a good booster for tomorrow's row. Our coach informed us that our main competition is: Italy, France, Russia, Australia, and Holland. But at this point we really don't know anything, so we are going to go out tomorrow and do what we do best.

This evening we will be attending the opening ceremonies for the U-23 World Championships.

July 19, 2006

The FISA U23 World Championship Opening Ceremonies. (Photo by Richard Klein)

When last I left off, we were getting off the water from our last practice before race time, and just trying to mentally compose ourselves. One of the things all of our coaches agreed on to help relax us a bit was to go to the opening ceremonies. So Team USA went, all in our USA gear, to the race course and we sat in the grandstand along side every other country. The ceremony was music and a representative would walk across the awards dock from each country holding an oar. When the United States of America was called up (the representative was a gold medalist in last year's W4-) the oar was carried across and we all thought it was a spare oar. Nope. I looked closely and it was my port oar they where using as the show oar. Maybe it was blessed with some luck or something that way. Then, after that, they had a bunch of dancers come out and do shows for us, and there was a lot of singing and dancing and speeches. It was over 95 degrees so my quad left before the end of the show. Following that, we went back to the hotel and had a nice boat meeting about what to do, and what not to do before the big race the next morning. We were really going into the race blind, not knowing who was going to be the fastest or who was going to be the slowest, so we came up with a very solid race plan, "Make it up as we go."

The FISA U23 World Championship Opening Ceremonies. (Photo by Richard Klein)

July 20, 2006

We woke up at around seven for an eight o'clock bus ride to the race course for an 8:45 weigh-in. It takes 25-30 minutes to get to the race course. The morning routine was: Wake-up, shower, put lots of clothing on, don't eat or drink until the weigh-in, and stay relaxed. At weigh-in, we were called last out of all the lwt 4x events since they called teams by alphabet, and the U in USA didn't really help us, but we made weight just fine. We had about 3 kg to spare total. After weigh-ins we checked our boat, oars, and mental states. Once all that was checked, it was about time to hit the water and make some magic happen.

In the heat, it is winner to advance to the final and the rest to repechage. In our race we had Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Australia. The Australian's are great fans. They are always cheering. Italy is who we really wanted in our heat because they were last year's gold medalists in this event. We were in the middle lane. Once we got up to the starting blocks, I took a quick look up at the starting dock, and there must have been 30-plus camera men, and five film crews. It was an amazing sight to see. Of course, I had to quickly refocus on what I was there to do.

I am looking both directions, I look forward at my two man and give him a pound (you punch each others fists.)

"Australia, Belgium, United States of America, Italy, Austria...Attention...BEEP."

Just like that the green light went, and my first race as international athlete had begun. 300 meters in, I look across and to my surprise we are up on every crew, even Italy. As the race kept moving on closer to the 1000-meter mark, it was us and Italy slowly moving away from the pack, as Italy was sitting about a bow deck behind us. We crossed the 1200 mark and Italy made this HUGE middle move and walks back on us and brings up the rating and keeps it up. We didn't respond on their move and they just kept walking on us until about 1350, when we decided to bring the rating up too. With 500 meters remaining, we were less than 0.25 behind the Italian's. We just kept walking, and we didn't stop walking away from the Italians until the finish line arrived. The finish order was USA 6:01.73, Italy 6:03.5, Australia, Belgium, and Austria. The winner of the other race was Russia, who pulled it out in the last 500 against Germany, winning by less than a second.

We have qualified for the grand final on Sunday with the fastest time going into it. So tomorrow we are going to go watch the repechage and see what the other crews can do. But besides that we are going to keep doing what we have been doing, practicing twice a day until the final.

Thanks a lot for reading guys, and if there is anything more you would like to hear please e-mail me. Thanks a lot for all they e-mails everyone has been sending me, it is really encouraging.

Oh, one last thing, the United States does not have a good lightweight sculling program so when the announcer was doing our race. He said, "WOW, this is a huge upset and surprise to be seeing the USA out in the lead past the 1000." A minute later, "The Italians are making a move now, and it doesn't seem as if the Americans will be able to hang with the defending world champions." Every day pushing it one step further.

July 20, 2006

So, last I left you, we had just won our heat to move straight on to the final. After the race, we stuck around the course for a little bit and decided it would be a nice gesture to watch the rest of the USA races that day. We found some shade and watched the rest of the races come down. The LM4- was the first event we saw, and the USA missed qualifying for the A/B semi by one tenth of a second, so they were really bummed about that. The next race coming down was the M4X, my stroke seat's cousin is sitting bow seat in that boat; there is a little rivalry between our two boats. They missed qualifying by just a few seconds, so they are moving onto the repechage tomorrow. Back-to-back was the men's and women's eights, both were very exciting races. The women were neck-and-neck with Bratislava, I believe, and half way through at the 1000-meter mark USA just pulled ahead and won the race by six seconds to advance straight to the final. In the men's eight race, they pushed hard in the first 1000, but Germany put on a huge push, and won the heat going from third to first.

After watching the race, we head back to the hotel to rest up and calm ourselves from the earlier race, before heading back out for an afternoon practice.

When we arrived at the course in the evening around 5:30, it was gorgeous. The wind was still for the first time and everyone was so relaxed from a long, hard day of racing. We went out for a light 8k paddle to clear our systems from the race earlier in the day. The row was really a great row. We were confident and relaxed, so it made for a very solid practice. What was even better was, we were out on the water with the Russians at the same time, and we rowed very well and so confident. When we got off the water, we talked about how the day went, and how we are going to prepare over the next few days for the final.

July 21, 2006

This morning was an early (6:15) wake-up for a 7 a.m. bus for practice. We went down to the course to do a race warm-up and a couple of power pieces. You would think the course would be empty at that time but, no. It was packed with boats, more of a war zone then the previous practice days. Our first 250 was not so hot, we didn't realize how fatigued we really were from the race, but our second one off the start was very quick, it was 39 seconds which is a 1:18 split. We came in and were very tired so we decided to call of afternoon practice, and watch the lm4x repechage later that morning. Like we expected, Italy easily won the repechage, with France in second. The Australians won their repechage, with the Germans close behind. So in the final on Sunday is composed of: USA, Russia, Italy, Germany, France, and Australia.

When we got back to the hotel, we decided to call of afternoon practice just from our fatigue level, and we spent three or four hours with our parents, out to lunch and at the hotel in Antwerp.

Thank you so much for all of your support, if it is reading this blog or e-mailing advice. I will leave you today with a quote from WorldRowing.com:

"Heat two was also pressure cooker racing for the top spot, but this time between two boats—the United States and Italy. Going neck and neck, at the half-way point there was nothing in it between these two countries. Italy had the experience advantage—Antonio Pizzurro, Michele Petracci and Paolo Grugni were part of last year's winning crew. All credit to the United States. This is a debut international race for the entire crew and in the final sprint they managed to push ahead of the talented Italians using a stroke rate a couple of notches lower than Italy."

July 21, 2006

Since we decided it would be best to cancel practice, it was a very laid back and relaxed evening. The evening started off watching the Tour de France, but as soon as my boat mates realized that I had brought the movie "Cool Runnings," we turned off the Tour and put it in. In the middle of the movie, we stopped and went down to the restaurant to get dinner. When we got there, the Australians were having some sort of pasta and chicken meal, so we thought maybe we could just order some pasta, since nothing on the menu was suitable for us to eat. Well, when the waiter came over, we asked him if we could just have pasta, he said, "No, I am sorry, we do not serve pasta here, only what is on the menu." So after a few rounds of arguing we realized the waiter was not willing to do us a favor and boil some pasta. We ended up just ordering room service and getting chicken and mashed potatoes. This allowed us to finish the movie sooner, and go to bed around 9:30.

July 22, 2006

My roommate and I got awoken in the middle of the night by a very random phone call. So I turned over and quickly picked up the phone, only to find out that it was my three man, Dan, telling us the bus was leaving for the race course and that we had to get down there right away. Well, I guess it wasn't such a random phone call; we forgot to set our alarms for a 7 a.m. bus. John and I threw uni-suits on and sprinted to the bus. The rest of the USA team didn't look so happy, so John and I quickly took our seats and sat in silence until we reached the course.

When we arrived, our quad walked over to the weigh-in station to see how we were doing on weight, and we were perfect. Almost exactly what we wanted to be: John 70.3 kg, Dan 72.25 kg, Brian 69.9 kg, and myself at 67.2 kg. So we just made the average weight of 70 kg, which we were really proud of.

The race course was nice this morning. There was a light tail-wind breeze. It wasn't very hot, and slight clouds here and there. The workout for the morning was to do 8k with two power 10s and one start, and if we felt good after that we could do another 2-4k. We went out on the water this morning with a lot of direction and energy. We knew what we had to do, and we just went out there and had a great practice. The first run was a relaxed row, with no one around us, just focusing on technique, but when we came back down for our second loop, the big boys decided to join us. The men's eight from Germany and USA came out to play. So for the first 2k we just held of Germany, while the USA was up about 200 meters on us. But once we turned around, we found ourselves in a little Battle Paddle against the USA eight. It was a lot of fun to row along side the eight; we hung with them the whole 2k, and just had some fun with each other, exchanging the lead. The USA eight went in to the dock, and we went out for another 2k spin. But, before we started the loop, we went to the side of the lake and talked to our assistant coach, and he gave us pointers and technique corrections in our stroke. The last 2k of our row was really solid, and the starts went well. So after that we just took the boat in, and stretched.

Since finding food back at the hotel is so hard, we decided to stay at the race course until 1 o'clock to eat lunch. So from 9-1 we watched some races, and laid down for a very long time on the cafeteria couches.

The USA men's single sculler, James Dietz, won his repechage and will move onto the C level final this afternoon. The heavyweight men's 4x got second in their C-level final today, so they are done with racing. The only other races that the USA has today, is the men's lightweight A/B semifinal, and the women's lightweight A/B semifinal. (A/B semifinal means that, if you come in top three, you advance to the grand final to try and get a medal, and if you come in bottom three, you go to the petite final, no medals.)

This afternoon we still have to decide if we want to practice or just rest up a little bit more for tomorrow's final in the men's lightweight quadruple sculls.

Thanks a lot for everyone's support and contributions to the USA Rowing team, and especially the USA Men's Lightweight Quad.

Cheers and enjoy your weekend!

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