Notebook | Ex-UW rower booked passage

When the Olympic trials for small-boat rowing begin Monday in New Jersey, former Washington rower Megan Kalmoe will be on the sideline. Happily.

That's because she and double sculls partner Ellen Tomek already made the Olympic team for Beijing, the first rowers to be named. The rest of the team will be announced on or before June 27.

So instead of competing in the pressure-cooker Olympic trials, they'll be training and cheering on teammates.

It has been five days since she and Tomek were nominated to the team June 3. But Kalmoe, 24, from St. Croix Falls, Wis., sounds as if the news is just starting to sink in.

The pair earned the early slot by virtue of winning a national selection regatta this spring and then placing fourth at a World Cup in Lucerne, Switzerland, last weekend. The U.S. team won six medals, including the women's eight and an upset win for the men's quad over world champion Poland, a good sign for Beijing.

"I've talked to my family at home; I've talked to reporters," Kalmoe said by telephone from New Jersey, where the weeklong trials are scheduled for West Windsor at U.S. Rowing headquarters at Princeton. "It's still kind of surreal. It's hard to explain. Even though it was a long time in the making, I'm still in shock."

The U.S. women's rowing team has undergone some turnover since scoring a silver medal in the eight at the 2004 Olympics as the men's eight won gold. Kalmoe, an All-American before graduating from Washington in 2006, is part of Generation Next. She and Tomek, from Flint, Mich., are first-time Olympians.

But those who have been watching Kalmoe had a feeling this day was coming. She won gold in the women's four at the 2005 world under-23 championships, just three years after picking up the sport.

"I didn't really know it was going to happen," said Kalmoe, who also made her first senior national team. "I'm pretty young. I've only been with the [elite] group for about two years. It really could've gone either way. I definitely had my work cut out for me this year."

Being Olympic rookies means rowing under the radar, which is fine with Kalmoe.

"No one's going to be thinking about us," she said, calling it an "absolutely wonderful situation."

Their goal, naturally, is to win a medal. They just missed a medal at the Lucerne World Cup.

"We're definitely within striking distance, which is really, really exciting," she said.

Kalmoe is part of the UW pipeline to the national team that includes 2002 graduate Anna (Mickelson) Cummins of Bellevue, a member of the Olympic silver-medal team and 2006 world champion, who will compete next week with Seattle's Portia McGee in women's pair at the trials.

Other Washington rowers competing include Jonathan Burns of Vancouver and John Lorton of Seattle in men's double sculls; men's pairs Brodie Buckland of Olympia, teaming with San Francisco's Sebastian Bea; Seattle's Sam Burns and Ted Farwell of Madison, Wis.; Kyle Larson of Seattle and David Worley of Oak Harbor; Mark Voorhees of Bow, teaming with Paul Falcigno of Wallingford, Conn.

Kalmoe never rowed before her sophomore year at UW, when she walked onto the squad and enjoyed it. Then came winter training.

The sport is taxing enough physically. But winter is even tougher. Rowers get up well before dawn and train in the dark and cold. They wear lights strapped to their backs so other boats can see them and, hopefully, not crash. They row in the rain and snow. Sometimes, they launch boats from icy docks in the dark.

Kalmoe ran cross country in high school, and played basketball and softball. Rowing was like little else she had tried.

"Once it got to be winter training, it was so brutal, so psychologically difficult," she said. "Every day I'd wake up and say, 'Man, this is terrible. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm quitting tomorrow.' "

She kept saying it. Tomorrow never came, but spring did. Six years later, Kalmoe's an Olympian.

Macartney back

on snow

Crystal Mountain's Scott Macartney's last World Cup ski race in January ended with him being helicoptered off the Kitzbuhel downhill course with a severe concussion following a frightening fall and on his birthday, no less.

But he's back on the slopes training. He attended a U.S. team camp at California's Mammoth Mountain in late May and is planning to continue his training at a conditioning camp at team headquarters in Park City, Utah, later this month.

Macartney, the 10-year national team veteran and two-time Olympian, is looking toward next season and the 2010 Winter Olympics at Whistler, a few hours' drive from where he grew up.

"I never even thought about not coming back — that never came into my mind at all. I still have a lot of things I want to accomplish in the World Cup and in Whistler and I have a lot of things that I'm looking forward to," Macartney said.

NOTES

• Sally Roberts, who attended Federal Way High School, is a two-time world championship bronze medalist trying for her first Olympic berth when the U.S. Olympic trials in wrestling get under way Friday in Las Vegas. Roberts lives and trains in Colorado Springs and is the second seed in the 121-pound division. Only the winner of each weight class in men's and women's freestyle and men's Greco-Roman earns a trip to Beijing. Roberts will get some heavy competition from Marcie Van Dusen, who has a bye into the final by virtue of winning the national title; and national finalist Jenny Wong.

• In a new experiment, Olympic trials in both wrestling and judo will be held at the same time and place, Friday through Sunday in Las Vegas. You can actually watch a key track and field competition on television Sunday live, no less — when NBC broadcasts the Prefontaine Classic from Eugene, Ore. Historic (and renovated) Hayward Field again hosts the one-day invitational with heavy Olympic undertones. The U.S. Olympic track and field trials return to Hayward June 27-July 6. Washington State alum Bernard Lagat, the Kenyan-turned-American who stunningly swept 1,500-meter and 5,000-meter world titles last summer, is entered in the two-mile race, and UW grads Brad Walker (pole vault) and Aretha Thurmond (discus) are also scheduled to compete.

Meri-Jo Borzilleri: merijoborz@hotmail.com .