tOP ROWeRS

MICkELSOn: StabLE and COnfIdEnt
A world champion’s nomadic lifestyle

“Friends, i live out of a bag travelling our country and the world: Seattle, Princeton, San diego and europe. this is an incredible journey that plugs me into communities and intertwines my life with thousands of others. i rely upon my family, friends, and teammates along the way.”

This opening to Anna Mickelson’s website symbolises the life of an elite athlete. It is a picture of a nomadic, free lifestyle, a lifestyle of going to new places, of meeting new people.

Despite this existence, Mickelson, 27, is surprisingly stable in her life and her rowing career. Coming from the United States where often national crews change annually and new names pop up regularly on the international scene, Mickelson is part of a now well-established core group of sweep rowers who have been frequenting the medals dais at the international level for the past six years.

This stability crosses into other areas of Mickelson’s life. She first rowed internationally at the under 23 level just over a year after taking up the sport at university and earned gold in that first world outing. From then on Mickelson has consistently been winning medals. Two years later, in 2002, she made the US national team and won a World Championship title in the eight.

Since then she has been at the heart of one of the best women’s eights in the world sitting firmly in number five seat. She has only ever had one coxswain, Mary Whipple, who was part of the same university rowing team.

Together, they were part of the eight that set a World Best Time at the Athens Olympics and went on to win Olympic silver. They reset it in 2006 at the World Rowing Championships.

Apart from a short stint in the quad in 2005, Mickelson has remained a staunch sweep rower, although she admits sometimes single sculling is part of their training. «Sculling is a lot harder. I really respect it, but would need to improve it to like it more,» she says.