15 July 2017

Göran R Buckhorn writes:

For the 2017 World Rowing Championships in Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida, between 23 September and 1 October, USRowing has brought in one of the heavy cannons to their coaching team, the organisation announced in June. Mike Teti, coach for the University of California, Berkeley men for nine seasons, has joined the U.S National Team coaching staff, which includes the men’s coach Bryan Volpenhein, to select and train the men’s four and eight. Several U.S. collegiate coaches will collaborate with Teti and Volpenhein in the development, training and selection of the oarsmen for these boats.

In a statement Marcia Hooper, chair of the USRowing Board of Directors, said: ‘We are confident that as a board, organization and rowing community as a whole, we are putting the pieces in place to provide the absolute best platform for development of our U.S. athletes and our system.’

Rob Milam, chair of the USRowing High Performance Committee, remarked: ‘Mike, Bryan and the incredible U.S. collegiate coaches bring a body of knowledge and experience that is unparalleled across the world. We look forward to supporting them and our athletes as they focus on the 2017 World Rowing Championships.’

A couple of days ago, Charles Hamlin, executive director of the National Rowing Foundation, released a statement in which he wrote: ‘Equally exciting is the commitment of our country’s senior men’s collegiate coaches to support Mike, Bryan and the team. These include Olympic gold and bronze medalist, Wyatt Allen, from Dartmouth; World gold medalist, Chris Kerber, from Cornell; Geoff Bond from Penn; Greg Hughes from Princeton; Olympic and World gold medalist, Beau Hoopman, from Wisconsin; world silver medalist and eight-time coach of our national team, Charley Butt from Harvard; Mike Callahan from UW; and Steve Gladstone from Yale.’

This list is really the crème de la crème of coaches in the United States and it is going to be interesting to see how the USRowing men’s crews perform on ‘home waters’ at Sarasota in September. The U.S. men have struggled for some time now, failing to bring home medals. At last year’s Olympic Games in Rio, no U.S. men’s crew reached the medal podium, which, according to rowing historian Tom Weil, was probably the first time in the modern Olympic history that the U.S. men did not take any medal in rowing in all the Games they have participated in since 1900.

From USRowing’s announcement that Mike Teti was joining the U.S. National Team coaching staff in preparation for the 2017 World Championships, HTBS has gathered some background information about him:

As an oarsman, Teti was a twelve-time national team member and three-time Olympian. Between 1977 and 1993, he won 24 national titles, a silver medal at the 1979 Pan American Games in the four, and bronze and gold in the eight at the World Rowing Championships (1985 and 1987). He was also won bronze in the eights at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

Teti was named the U.S. head men’s coach after the 1996 Olympic Games, where he coached the lightweight men’s four to a bronze medal. In the 2000 Olympic Games, all of his sweep boats qualified for the finals, with the men’s pair capturing the silver medal. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Teti directed the men’s eight, stroked by Volpenhein, to a world record in its heat and an eventual gold medal, marking the first time the United States captured the men’s eight since 1964. He went on to coach the U.S. men’s eight to a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Teti returned to the Olympic stage in 2012 to coach the U.S. men’s eight in London. U.S. national team crews have produced a total of 28 medals under Teti’s guidance.

In 2008, Mike Teti received the USRowing Medal and in 2010, he was inducted into the National Rowing Foundation’s National Rowing Hall of Fame as the coach of the gold medal-winning 2004 men’s eight, becoming one of a few people to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as both a coach and an athlete.

Teti will go back to coach University of California men’s crews after the World Championships in Florida.