Rowing for gold

Though his entry into the sport may seem recent, his journey to representing the United States on the world stage has been years in the making. Formerly a competitive swimmer, Gernaat first developed a liking for rowing machines during warm-ups while training to be a Navy SEAL.

“It’s the combination of cardio and power,” he said. “That worked for me.”

But it wasn’t until last year that Gernaat tried his skills on the water, where he faces unique challenges balancing in a boat and leveraging his muscles for strokes. Born without his right pectoral and portions of his lat muscles on his right side, with a displaced femur and limited ankle flexibility, Gernaat is an adaptive rower and competes against other rowers with physical disabilities.

A father and retired software engineer for several years before he took up rowing, Gernaat didn’t think he could afford the time or money to join a competitive club. So he channeled his energy into competitive swimming from 2000 to 2004, eventually ranking 18th in the world in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle races amongst adaptive swimmers.

But after his wife of 22 years died in late 2015 from cancer, Gernaat felt the time was right for him to pursue rowing as a way for him to move forward into the next chapter of his life. And when he began training with coach Alice Henderson, also director of adaptive rowing at Redwood City’s Bair Island Aquatic Center, he knew he had found a sport into which he wanted to pour his time, finding ways to practice twice a day.

“For whatever reason, I like doing things other people don’t do,” he said.

It didn’t take long for Gernaat to establish his edge over others in the field. Just weeks into training, he achieved an elite standard on a 1-kilometer race, propelling him into trials for the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro held in Boston. Though it might seem like a short runway to reaching for a gold medal, for Gernaat, the desire to push himself as far as he can go came naturally.

“I’ve always wanted to be someone who’s one of the best,” he said. “I’m not looking to be the one guy who’s standing on top of everything, but I want to be up there.”

Though he didn’t make the Paralympic team, the trials is where he first heard about Natalie McCarthy, a 30-year-old blind rower living in Seattle, as a potential partner for mixed-double races.

The two connected and tried racing together in recent months, eventually qualifying for the World Rowing Championships in August. Set on a higher-stakes race, he said the pair is not necessarily competing with a particular outcome in mind. But he also found it hard to deny he’s set on winning their mixed-double race.

“I don’t have a particular outcome in mind, but as soon as I’m on the boat in the water, it’s absolutely about winning,” he said. “There’s a buzzer and when that goes off, that’s going to be everything.”

Gernaat suspects his instinct to excel to have some roots in his military training, which began at age 17 when he joined the U.S. Army after high school. Though he trained to complete his physical requirements there, Gernaat was met with prejudice from some officers who doubted his physical abilities. So he opted instead to serve in the U.S. Navy. In total, he completed six years of active military duty, he said. Though he didn’t graduate from the Navy SEAL program, he said that time spent training for it might play the biggest role in his mindset during competitive sports.

“It teaches you that what you consider limits aren’t anywhere close,” he said. “You’re capable of so much more.”

Henderson said Gernaat has proven himself to be an exceptional rower with an incredible sense of integrity, work ethic and drive. With years of experience coaching high school, college, masters and adaptive rowers, Henderson said Gernaat is unique in that he has a background in the military and with competitive swimming, two experiences she knows teaches athletes how to train hard.

“You get better when you work hard,” she said. “He has improved tremendously in a short period time because he works so hard.”

Training some five hours a day for close to two years, Henderson guesses Gernaat has already put more than three years’ worth of training into his preparation for future competitions.

And Gernaat is showing no signs of slowing down. Though he’s focused on racing hard later this month, he is also looking at the world championships as a stepping stone on his path toward the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.

He acknowledged that he could probably achieve the same results with a slower ramp-up to training. Before he quit work in recent months to focus on training, he said he was awake between 4 a.m. and midnight to fit training in before and after work, hours he said were very similar to those he kept in Navy SEAL training. But he remains unfazed by the work required to race at the level he is racing.

“So it’s like yeah, well this is what you do if you want to do it,” he said. “If you don’t want to put in that kind of effort, it’s going to take you a lot longer to get there.”

Visit gofundme.com/world-rowing-championship to support Gernaat’s trip to the World Rowing Championships Sept. 23 to Oct. 1.

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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