UNLIKE the teammates who power a quad or an eight-boat and rely on one another for rhythm and timing, a single sculler has no other rower to look to. He or she is a solitary person in a narrow shell of a boat no more than 12 inches across at its widest point.
Michelle Guerette, a two-time World Championships bronze medalist in the single, often feels alone in another way: she has no one to follow in her quest for an Olympic gold medal. No American woman has ever won a gold medal in the single scull event at the World Championships or the Olympics, and no American single sculler, male or female, has won an Olympic medal of any kind since 1988.
Despite the lack of medals at the elite level, on the recreational and collegiate level the sport is growing at a rate of about 10 percent a year, said Karen Solem Derringer, the publisher of The Rowers’ Almanac. Ms. Derringer estimated that there are 250,000 master, collegiate, junior and recreational rowers in the United States, up from 177,500 in 2004, when the publication completed its first survey. About 60 percent of rowers are scullers, she said.
Ms. Guerette, 27, joined the varsity women’s rowing team at Harvard as a freshman after impressing Liz O’Leary, the head coach of women’s heavyweight crew, with her strength on a rowing machine. She had never rowed before, but she was well suited for the sport, being tall (5-foot-11) with exceptionally long limbs.
“She looks like a bird with very long wings when she’s holding the oars,” said her coach, Charley Butt, who also coaches the men’s varsity lightweight rowing squad at Harvard. Come August, she hopes to represent the United States in the 2,000-meter single women’s scull at the Olympic Summer Games in Beijing.
During Ms. Guerette’s ascent in the ranks of elite rowing, she has learned a few lessons that could also benefit recreational and collegiate rowers. One is that you should never stop working on technique. “There are principles in rowing that are universally correct,” Ms. Guerette said.
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