Young and Limitless

September 01, 2011

BLED, Slovenia – Most of the competitors walking around the boatyard at Lake Bled this week have worn very serious, tense expressions.

This is, after all, the 2011 World Rowing Championships and the stakes are high. No one told that to 19-year-old Andrew Campbell, of New Canaan, Conn., who, this morning, finished second in his semifinal for the lightweight men’s single sculls and made his second world championships final in two months.

Campbell laughs his way to and from the launch and recovery docks. He seems oblivious to the pressures of senior-level competition. In his heat on Sunday, he wasn’t even sure where he finished. He knew he had qualified; he just didn’t know he had won until he saw himself on the big screen at the finish line.

“I’m having fun,” Campbell said. “And I lot of this is that I’m young and I’m not putting limits on myself. I think people who spend too long in the boat, who race for a long time in the boat, can start to put limits on who they can beat and what they can do, where I’m coming into these races not knowing anyone and no one knows me. And essentially, I’m operating without limits.”
 
It might be true that people didn’t know him, or know much about him, coming into these senior world championships, but it won’t last. Not after this week.

Yesterday he finished second to Denmark’s Henrik Stephansen, who has been the fastest lightweight men’s single at this competition. He goes to the final with a solid chance of reaching the medal stand.

Campbell rowed a patient race. His plan was to qualify and he rowed in second place the length of the course. He did not lose his focus when Stephansen pulled from fourth into first in the second 500 meters.

“It felt good,” Campbell said after the race. “I’m really happy to make the final. That was my goal coming in here. It was a tough row. There were three boats in it for the second position. Henrik hung back at the very beginning as he normally does, then pretty much exploded from the 500 in.

“It wasn’t my absolute maximum,” he said. “So I’ve got more to show tomorrow.”

If anyone should be capable of judging his own speed and capability, it’s Campbell. He has been rowing the single since middle school and has now racked up a string of accomplishments in the boat.

He has won the USRowing Youth National Championships, a bronze at the 2010 World Rowing Junior Championships, and last month he won bronze at the 2011 World Rowing Under 23 World Championships.

“He’s 19 and just going for it,” said Charlie Butt, his coach here and at Harvard University where Campbell now goes to school. “He’s learned from a well-established junior coach, Yan Vengerovsky, who came from the Soviet Union with a wife, a five-year-old, and $12 dollars in his pocket to Maritime Rowing Club – and this is where he learned to row.
 
“Andrew had the good fortune to learn expert technique at a very young age. Obviously, he has a lot of talent and, now in 12 or 14 months, he’s been in the A final at the junior worlds, the U23 worlds and now the senior worlds,” Butt said. “He’s really in it. He did a great job today.”

Ed Moran

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