Meet Marty Crotty

Words: Tom Ransley

Former USA international oarsman Marty Crotty likes to stay busy. Crotty, the 2023 IRA Coach of the Year, led the Princeton Tigers men’s lightweights to 1V and 2V national championship titles. He also co-founded Princeton Carbon-Works (PCW), a manufacturer of record-breaking, world championship winning all-carbon wheels who supply cycling colossus, Team INEOS.

His enthusiasm for sport and business mimics Nike co-founder Phil Knight, who wrote Shoe Dog – one of Crotty’s favourites. “I devoured that book twice, back to back! Knight was trying to make sneakers that worked well on a cinder track and then all of a sudden Michael Jordan uses his shoes, and then they're off to the races!” So far Crotty’s own tale is a salespitch worthy, sport-straddling story with water-borne, trackside and courtroom drama. Row360 gets the inside line.

Take us back to the beginning, before PCW was in the public eye, when it was nothing but a concept.

I was very active in long-distance triathlon, finishing top 10 or 15 in my age group at the World Championships 70.3, and I had my eye on all the cycling technology.

The idea for PCW came about at the Head of the Charles in 2012. I was at a dinner and it ended at a Boston Bruins hockey game. I was with some rowing shell manufacturers from China. It’s a long game and I had a captive audience! For about two hours we talked about manufacturing carbon fibre bicycle wheels. That's how this whole thing started.

It took several years from that date to making our first prototype which involved designing different things, having different ideas, and eventually settling on the shape that we settled on. We tried to make crude prototypes ourselves, out of clay and MDF; just to get the shape.

Your co-founders Harrison Macris and Brad Werntz are also former rowers, how did they get on board?

After that fateful hockey game my Chinese carbon composite contact followed up with, 'Get your engineering team together and let's get cracking’. I had to pretend I had an engineering team!

I coached Brad on the US junior team. He was on my most successful team, that was a great group, a lot of US Olympic guys came out of that group.

Brad had just graduated from Princeton and I said: 'Brad, we've got to assemble a team. We've got to get on this conference call and pretend like we've got a team, an idea and a business plan!’

Brad bought Harrison to the table and we've been together ever since.

“Our success this season hopefully reflects my general headspace. It's been fun.”

Harrison rowed at Boston University under Tom Bohrer. He's been incredible. I always kid Harrison, he's a lot better engineer than he ever was a rower. If he’d made it in rowing to the level he is as an engineer, he'd be an Olympic gold medallist.

Every idea, every drawing, and everything he ever creates in his mind seems to have been a success. We're batting a thousand and most of that is because of Harrison, we haven't had to take too many pauses, or steps back.