Rowing Video Of The Week: Inside a Training Session with Yale Crew

Yale launching for the Champ Eight at the 2015 Head Of The Charles (Photo: B. Kitch)

This week's video offers an inside look at a training session with Steve Gladstone in the launch, as Yale goes through exercises and then some rate-building work in the fall of 2013. If you haven't seen it before, it's a fine example of technical rowing as Gladstone puts the crew through their paces; if you have seen it before, it's well worth a second look.

It's also a reminder that Yale's fantastic performance last season and into the summer at Henley Royal Regatta wasn't a fluke—it was the first real glimpse of the work that Gladstone and staff have been doing since his arrival to build the program into what looks to be a national championship contender. And, frankly, we're not surprised.



Between the recruiting—the roster is certainly among the best in the country—and bringing everyone (from advanced but diverse rowing backgrounds) onto the same page in terms of technique, Yale looks poised this year to right the wrongs of last year's IRA, which saw them lose their only race of the season—the semifinal of the men's varsity eight, where they landed fourth and missed the final by a painfully small margin (just 0.02 of a second behind Northeastern).

While the above video is impressive, you can see that they have stepped up their game in the intervening months and years, looking at the Instagram clips below.

A video posted by rowingrelated (@rowingrelated) on




The October 22nd video even features a comment from none other than triple Olympic champion Drew Ginn of Australia (recently featured here on RR for his incredible Australian record of 836.36km on a track bike in 24 hours), who also added the below on Twitter.



Even still, the Elis will be up against fantastic competition as always—the California Golden Bears had an excellent fall, and weren't far off Yale at the Charles (also, the Bears' 6k performances at USRowing's West Coast Fall Speed Order were, in a word, impressive). Princeton has been building momentum. And that's before we even get started on the five-time defending champions from Seattle.

Will 2016 be the Year of the Bulldog? We can't wait to find out.

In the meantime, the rowing 'hot stove' season is only beginning—keep an eye on our rankings page as the spring season draws nearer.

-RR

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