Last weekend, a member of the Duke rowing program made history in an unlikely location.
Sunday, junior Amelia Booth pulled her feet out of the water long enough to blister the lightweight collegiate field at the World Indoor Rowing Championships in Boston, Mass. The Buffalo, N.Y., native placed first among the college rowers and sixth in the world.
"This is a tremendous accomplishment for Amelia and I couldn't be more proud of her performance in such a tight racing situation," coach Robyn Horner said.
Booth posted a 7:16.40 mark that bested second-place finisher and captain of the Radcliffe lightweight rowing team, Erin Barnhart, by over two seconds. Third place went to Stanford's Susan BeVille, who lagged behind Booth by over three seconds.
"It's something I've always wanted to do," Booth said, "but I didn't want to go unless I could win."
The lightweight field is limited to rowers 135 pounds and under and the 100 competitors raced in two separate heats of 50 each to narrow the field own to 10 final qualifiers. Then the top 10 in both the collegiate and international fields each went to separate finals, but their final times were mixed for the overall rankings.
Since the international field was admittedly weak, with the absence of the world recordholder, the importance of Booth's accomplishment is not so much in her standing with both the collegiate and international competitors. Rather, her win is emblematic of the Blue Devils' rising program. Duke's prominence is literally growing so fast that it has no more room in its boathouse and must store its extra sculls outside.
Duke's program is not only full of talented, but committed rowers whose training regimen rivals that of any of the more historically strong women's programs, such as Radcliffe.
"Everyone who went [to the World Indoors] set a personal record," Booth said. "It just shows how much fitter we are that we could replicate our times twice."
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