Friday's Medal Winning Recap and Saturday Preview

The lightweight men's eight, with Phil Henson on the right (Photo: USRowing)

Last Updated: 04.Sep.2015

In down-to-the-wire fashion, Green Racing Project rower, Phil Henson (Somerset, NJ) and his teammates in the lightweight men’s eight squeaked out a bronze medal in Friday’s final at the World Rowing Championships in Aiguebelette, France.

The eight, composed of Henson, Matthew Lenhart (Lafayette, CA), Dave Smith (Seattle, WA), Jack Devlin (Arlington, VA), Alex Twist (Seattle WA), Chistopher Lambert (Ft. Lauderdale, FL), Peter Schmidt (Providence, RI), Tobin McGee (Rye, NY), and coxswain Jack Carlson (Weston, MA), began the race in last place, but this did not deter the group, as a strong middle 1000 meters put the eight back in medal contention. Henson and his crew held off the sprint of a strong Italian crew, who started the first half of the race in first place. The eventual winner of the event would be Germany with a time of 5:38.92. Second place was France. The United States pulled 5:40.41.

This ends a long season for Henson who began rowing with his GRP teammates in Clemson, SC, in March. He then spent the rest of the year rowing in Boston, eventually attending the lightweight eight training camp at Community Rowing. After being selected to the boat, Henson and his teammates won an uncontested trial. Friday was their first true race against other boats with something on the line. Clearly they were able to take advantage of the opportunity. 

Earlier in the day, Hugh McAdam (Grantham, NH) raced his A final in the lightweight men’s quad. Pushed to the back of the pack coming off the start, the crew of McAdam, Austin Meyer (Cohoes, NY), Colin Ethridge (Laytonsville, MD), and Matt O’Leary (Westwood, MA), pushed their way into fifth place past Great Britain. In the final 500 Great Britain passed McAdam’s quad and the Italians. In this exchange, the United States quad was able to move by the fading Italian quad and finish fifth with a time of 5:55.86. The winning crew was France with a time of 5:48.5.

McAdam’s lightweight quad was a collaboration of four rowers from four different clubs. They began training in Craftsbury leading up to their uncontested trials. Later in the summer, the quad would train in Philadelphia and then Boston prior to heading to France for the World Championships. To begin their competition in Aiguebelette, the Italian quad, who they would eventually beat in the final, edged McAdam and his crew out by just under 2 seconds. In the repechage, the lightweight quad would earn their birth in the A final by split seconds over Australia.

GRP action is not over in Aiguebelette, as the men’s double of John Graves (Cincinnati, OH) and Ben Dann (Pound Ridge, NY) have their C final Saturday. The race goes off at 5:30 a.m. east coast time. They avoided the D final by easily placing top three in the C/D semifinal on Friday. Graves and Dann will race crews from Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Denmark and Poland.