Photo credit: World Rowing/Benedict Tufnell
Simon van Dorp, for those that don’t know him, is a 26-year-old Dutch Olympian and graduate of the University of Washington. This summer he rocked up to the World Championships in what was essentially his first international race in the single and came second. Why is that so notable? Because he raced the Tokyo Olympics in the Dutch men’s eight.
Simon van Dorp“It’s been going better than I expected, I’m still new to it and really figuring it out as I’m going along.”
Simon credits his fast adaption to racing the single to his experiences on an erg. “On the erg it’s just you and the machine… you have to be able to extract the most out of yourself. I think the single is pretty similar where you just have to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.” He also states that he did a lot of erging whilst at the University of Washington and that this helped him to improve his mental approach, which is invaluable in the single.
Simon mentions his confidence in his own ability a few times throughout our chat, and whilst it’s clear that he is self assured, it never slips into arrogance. In fact, as he talks about the translatability of ergs to the single he casually mentions, “I was fairly quick on the erg in the past.” A quick google reveals that he holds the second fastest 2k time ever of 5:36.4 on a Concept 2, a score he achieved at just 21 years of age. I’d say that qualifies as fairly quick.
Though it’s not something we explicitly cover, it’s clear that Simon also believes in not overthinking things. “Rowing is rowing” comes up a few times, and this approach has likely helped keep him on track through a busy year. It’s also obvious that Simon largely competes with himself, pushing for the next target because he personally expects more.
Simon van Dorp“Obviously there’s other people in the race too and you kind of have to race them as well but, for the most part, if you get from Point A to Point B as quickly as you can then you’re doing a good job – so I’ve just been trying to do that.”
Simon only graduated from the University of Washington in June 2022, having taken some time out to train for and race the Tokyo Olympics. His time there clearly had a big impact.
Simon van Dorp“That feeling of we’re all doing something really cool here together is something that I definitely felt like we missed at the time here in the Netherlands. It’s getting a lot better, and that’s something that’s really cool about the Dutch team right now, we’re training together with all boats, men and women.”
Not only has the sense of being a part of something bigger stuck with him, but so did the monumental nature of sports; “the football stadium alone was bigger than any stadium here in the Netherlands, which was pretty incredible”. Rowing at the University of Washington might not involve a giant stadium, but it’s a sport that Seattle lives and breathes. “We would get cheered during some random practices on a Monday morning at 7am, which was a great feeling.”
You need only have a vague idea of the plot of The Boys in the Boat, a book by Daniel James Brown soon to be released as a feature film co-produced and directed by George Clooney, to know how deep the rowing history runs at the University of Washington and in Seattle.
Simon read the book when he first went to Washington and he says that, as is tradition, every time you take a Cal tank top after a victory as a Washington rower, “you’re very, very pleased – more so than pretty much any other school – I think that’s been the case since the 1910’s, 20’s and 30’s and it’s something you still feel. There’s a big mutual respect and a fierce rivalry [between Washington and Cal] that has been there for a very long time.”
Of course, the question is why, after an Olympic final and a career spanning Junior, U23 and Senior World Championship gold medals in the eight, he swapped to sculling? Simon wasn’t a total stranger to sculling as he had adopted two blades as a junior and at Washington, which he felt had gone ‘alright’ – clarifying that he had been one of the fastest there in a single.
“It sounded like they (the Netherlands team) were looking to prioritise sculling over the next couple of years, which they kind of have,” he explained. “I don’t want to disrespect anyone on the team because everyone is doing so great right now. The way I saw it I just wanted to be in the best boats, and I thought I could make it sculling.”
Laughing, Simon admitted that the transition that summer was definitely tricky and involved a lot of learning. He realised how many things he took for granted, even with things such as setup; “I always knew what a good setup felt like for me, but then sculling you start doubting a lot of things.”
Simon’s candour surprises me at moments throughout our interview but especially when he admits that, from a technique perspective, he was having issues. “I still kind of do with holding my arms straight,” he acknowledges. “I tended to really grip in the arms which I didn’t do as a sweep rower, especially with my right arm and then every single time your boat isn’t going straight or there’s something wrong with the angles of the boat I started doubting myself.” Perhaps that’s exactly why he has so many medals, because he’s honest about where he can improve.
Whilst the switch from sweep to sculling was Simon’s choice, the swap from the quad to the single was not. If you were paying close attention, you will have noticed that Simon went from racing in the quad at the 2023 European Championships to the single at the World Championships less than four months later.
Simon van Dorp“Eelco really wants to push people to get as much as possible. He really tries to get as many gold medals as possible. If you’re not getting a gold medal and he sees an opportunity to get a gold medal, there’s going to be switches.”
Sighing, Simon explained that the quad had been struggling with consistency at Europeans and that it was a tricky situation with two Olympic Champion scullers and two new guys in the boat. As a result, the coaches wanted to try something else, especially in light of Lennart van Lierop winning in the single at the European Championships. They wanted to see if the quad went faster with Lennart than it did him. “I didn’t agree with the logic at the time, or at least the criticism that was going to me, but at the same time I definitely feel like Lennart deserved his shot at the quad.”
“I definitely was excited about it (racing the single) but a little pissed off at the way it went and I felt… quite under-prepared,” he explained. “It was just like ‘Okay, you’re going to go to Lucerne in the World Championships in the single. We don’t have that much data on you in the single but we think you can figure it out.’ Pretty much that’s the way it was.”
Although this was certainly a jumping-into-the-deep-end moment, Simon did feel like he could figure it out. The Dutch team trains in the single during the winter, even the sweep team, and he had gained some good speed there. However, he wasn’t initially sure what he could really achieve as he had been sick for the trials so he wasn’t at peak fitness. Despite going eight seconds slower on his RP3 2k, he did have some good results on the water which he said improved his confidence. Not fully knowing what he could achieve in the single just made him more curious.
His confidence was further bolstered by racing the Holland Beker two weeks after the switch occurred. Though it is an international race that has attracted athletes such as Mahé Drysdale in the past, his Dutch national teammates were Simon’s competition this year, namely Melvin Twellaar, Stefan Broenink, Lennart van Liop and Tone Wieten. “It was really good to have the competition of Stef, Melvin and Lennart who had all been very successful in the single before, to see where I was at as a baseline” he said.
He came second behind Twellaar, noting “that was great for my confidence, to see what I could do with minimal preparation and just, you know, send it and see what happens.”
However, it still wasn’t a straightforward path for Simon from there to the World Championships. A wrist injury meant he couldn’t race World Cup III at Lucerne and that meant the World Championships, the Olympic qualification regatta, would be his first real race on the international stage since 2016 as a junior. No pressure.
Simon van Dorp“The scary thing is, there’s 48 entries. If you make a mistake in the quarter final, you’re done.”
Was he nervous? “Yes, is the short answer.” The long answer is that there were stages. His initial excitement and irritation at the change shifted to “Oh shit, this is the real deal, I can’t hide behind anyone else. I had to wrap my head around that.” Though the wrist injury and inability to race Lucerne was a set back, it did mean that Simon was able to get some good miles in on the bike so “fitness-wise it was fine”. Training camp went well and racing pieces had been steadily improving. “In training I had been putting in good percentages, so I knew in theory I was in a position to compete for the medals. It’s one thing to think that, it’s another thing to actually do that. That was the scary part, thinking I had good speed but not really knowing what that was worth.” What started as nerves shifted into excitement ahead of the World Championships.
Simon van Dorp“I’m confident in my own abilities, but you know, I could also have just been delusional”.
To find out more about how the World Championships turned Simon’s rowing career on its head, keep your eyes peeled for part two, coming soon.
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