Michelle Sechser & Mary Jones Nabel: The Making of the Lightweight Women’s Double Sculls for 2023 World Rowing Championships

On Monday, Sept. 4, Michelle Sechser and Mary Jones Nabel will line up for their first heat of the lightweight women’s double sculls at the 2023 World Rowing Championships in Belgrade, Serbia. Sechser is the defending silver medalist in the boat class. But it will be the first regatta that she has ever rowed with Jones Nabel.

The two women were paired in the LW2x — shorthead for the lightweight women’s double sculls — after a selection camp in July. Prior to the camp, Sechser was paired with Molly Reckford: the two finished fifth in the LW2x at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, then won the silver medal together at 2022 world championships. Sechser and Reckford also finished second in the rowing World Cup II in June, coming in 0.08 of second behind reigning world champions Emily Craig and Imogen Grant from Great Britain. But at USRowing’s selection camp in July, the boat was faster with Sechser and Jones Nabel.

The primary objective for the two 36-year-old women is to qualify the boat for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 (by finishing in the top seven at world champs). But they are also favorites to win a medal. 

“The really fun thing is how Michelle and I have trained around each other for so long and somehow never ended up in a boat together,” said Jones Nabel by Zoom a few days before leaving for Serbia. 

“I think people in the rowing community have been like, ‘Those are two of our really fast women, why haven’t we not had them together [in a boat] yet?’” she added. “We’re excited to finally have the chance to see what we can do.”

Although they are a new pair in the LW2x, both Sechser and Jones Nabel have rowed parallel courses in their journey to Serbia — and then hopefully to Paris next year. How they finish at world championships this year will likely portend their chances next year at Paris 2024’s Vaires-Sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.

Sechser grew up in California and followed her older sister onto her high school’s crew team. More interested in dance and music as a kid, Sechser was new to sports. But she liked the rhythm of a crew working together, and she liked the direct feedback of rowing: the more she put into the sport, the more she improved.

“I just really liked that feedback loop,” she said by Zoom from USRowing’s national training center in Princeton, New Jersey. “It’s a really simple system. I would work harder and get faster.”

Similarly, Jones Nabel started rowing as a junior for the Rocket City Rowing Club in Huntsville, Alabama, after the coach noticed her in high school and suggested she try rowing. She had tried to follow her brothers into basketball and soccer but lacked their hand-eye coordination and agility. She loved being out on the water and was quickly hooked.

“It was a sport that I could finally excel at,” she said. “I was excited that I had found something that matched my strengths.”

Sechser rowed at the University of Tulsa — an NCAA Division I program where she excelled. She rolled straight into an MBA program at Tulsa after finishing her undergrad degree and worked as an assistant rowing coach.

One day, while coaching the team through seat racing (where rowers take each other on in time trials to see who is fastest), Secher felt “these tugs on my heartstrings that I wasn’t done.” She tried to qualify for the 2011 world championship team but didn’t make it. Instead, she competed in the 2011 Pan American Games, taking bronze medals in the women’s lightweight double and quad sculls. 

“[The Pan American Games] really brought to light that first taste of international racing, how many pieces to the puzzle there are to get it right,” she said. “It’s not just physiology. It’s not just weight. It’s not just technique. It’s not just the sport psychology of racing. It brings it all together, along with your partnership in the double.”

The next year, Sechser qualified for her first of seven world championships teams. In 2017, she earned her first world championships medal: a bronze medal in the LW2x (with Emily Schmieg).

In January 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, Sechser and Reckford paired in the LW2x. Reckford had only had one season in the lightweight women’s quad. But Sechser and Reckford clicked in the double. By the time 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials came around a year later than expected in 2021, both women had taken the extra time to address weaknesses. At trials, they were just off world-record pace, and they qualified for their first Olympic Games.

“The urgency and pressure were really good,” said Sechser. “There was such a short finite amount of time until Tokyo, and every day really had to be impactful, learning each other’s strokes and learning how to move the double as one.”

In Tokyo, facing crews that had been paired for years, Sechser and Reckford made the final. In the final 500 meters of the 2,000-meter race, they gained significantly on the four boats in front of them, finishing in fifth but just a half-second off the podium and one second from an Olympic gold medal.

“Being one second off a gold medal is pretty good for a crew’s second regatta together,” noted Sechser, who had planned on retiring after the Tokyo Games. But the minute the race was over, she changed her mind.

The two women carried their momentum into 2022. They won World Cup II in June, then at 2022 world championships, scored the silver medal by finishing just over three seconds behind the British LW2x. 

Nine months later, in June 2023, the Sechser and Reckford finished second again to the British boat, but this time, they had closed the gap to just 0.08 of a second. The previous day, the British lightweight double scull had set a world record of 6:40.47.

The future looked bright for the Sechser/Reckford boat — especially at 2023 world championships where they would be the defending silver medalists. But another veteran rower was working hard to make the LW2x for 2023 world championships. 

Jones Nabel rowed for the University of Tennessee, where she majored in physics. Through summer programs, she saw potential in the sport as a lightweight rower (under 125 pounds). She made her first world championship team in 2014 in the lightweight women’s quad sculls, and she almost qualified for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team. When she didn’t make the team heading to the Olympic Games Rio 2016, she focused on racing the lightweight women’s single sculls (LW1x), finishing fourth at world championships that year. 

“I always felt like I had one more step to go,” she replied when asked what has kept her in the sport for over a decade.

At the 2017 world rowing championships, Jones Nabel won a bronze medal in the LW1x. But in the lightweight category, only the double sculls is an Olympic class boat. So in 2018, Jones Nabel paired with Emily Schmieg, and the two won a world championship silver medal in the LW2x.

The Tokyo Olympic Games were in their sights. But it was not meant to be. First, Jones Nabel herniated a disk in her back in 2019. She recovered by 2020, but then the pandemic postponed the Games for a year, and in December 2020, Schmieg was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She recovered from surgery and treatment, and the two women were determined to stick together. But “we never really found our speed again,” said Jones Nabel, and they did not do well in the Olympic trials.

Jones Nabel then tried to make the open weight quad sculls for the Tokyo Games but was the last one cut from the quad. After having success in 2018 in the LW2x, it was a tough blow.

“I was clawing my way back through injury and the pandemic and everything, and I really didn’t know if I would row after having had quite a disappointment,” she admitted.

Jones Nabel returned to her single scull and rediscovered her love of the sport. She wanted to “get back to what made me fast in the first place.” By spring, she was flying again and won world cups I and II in the LW1x.

Then, in the middle of the season, Jones Nabel’s dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He insisted that his daughter compete at 2022 world championships. But with her emotions elsewhere, she found it hard to put everything into training. Jones Nabel finished fourth in the B Final.

“I was pretty devastated and underprepared and had a really tough regatta,” she said.

A little over a month later, her father passed away.

After such an emotional rollercoaster, Jones Nabel could have packed it in and turned her full attention to her job as a software tester for a company that develops electronic health record systems. But with the support of the rowing community and USRowing’s new high performance director, Josy Verdonkschot (former head women’s coach for The Netherlands), she decided to make a push for Paris.  

“I was way off speed after having such a tough year, and I had to build back really slowly this year to be where I wanted to be,” she said. “I just had to trust the process, that I’d have a shot at making the [lightweight women’s double].”

In Jones Nabel’s favor: the LW2x is no longer a “trials” boat (where club athletes put together their own boats, then compete for national team spots in spring selection or “trials” races). Like the larger boats (the quad, four, and eight), the double sculls is now selected by coaches through a national team camp process.

The lightweight women’s scullers began the 2023 season with a single sculls time trial in March. Sechser, Reckford, Jones Nabel, and relative newcomer Audrey Boersen finished in the top four and were invited to the selection camp.

After phase one of the selection process, Sechser and Reckford rowed together in the LW2x for World Cup II (the race where they finished 0.08 of a second behind Great Britain), with Jones Nabel and Boersen in a second LW2x at the same world cup (they won the B Final). 

Then during phase two of the selection process in early July, Sechser first rowed with Reckford in a time trial, then did another time trial with Jones Nabel. In an unexpected turn of events, the LW2x with Sechser and Jones Nabel was faster than the combination of Sechser and Reckford.

“I’m just excited that I’ve been able to be so supported and be back to a place where I feel like I’m performing at my highest level and get the shot that I’ve been working for for a really long time,” said Jones Nabel. “I’ve overcome quite a lot of different adversity to get back here.”

Rowing a double scull is like a marriage, where the two crew members must work together to make the shell move fast. In other words, 1+1 needs to equal 3, not just the sum of the two parts. Sechser and Jones Nabel have only had two months to figure out how they best work together.

“It’s a fun puzzle trying to find the things that are going to make us the fastest,” said Jones Nabel. “We’re bringing our own experiences to the boat. We’ve both found success in our own ways, and we both have good answers. We need to always be trying to find a common answer.”

In Belgrade, Sechser and Jones Nabel are aiming to make the A Final — a six boat race which guarantees an Olympic berth in the LW2x at the Paris Games. Then the day of the final, they will be racing for the podium.

“We know the standard, we know the speed we need to get onto that podium, and Mary’s such a seasoned veteran,” said Sechser. “The end goal is how can we go 6:40 pace, conditions aside. Training off that goal for me makes it easy. It’s just a really simple objective.”