A stalwart, steward of swing rewinds the clock at Windermere

Words: Stuart Sim

PHOTOGRAPHY SCOTT EKLUND OF RED BOX PICTURES

Back in a boat but not on the rudder, Stuart Sim, a Tokyo 2020 Olympian and University of Washington alum, revisits the Windemere Cup. The Windermere Cup is an annual series of rowing races hosted by the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

As a freshman cox Sim steered the UW Freshmen Men’s 8+ to an undefeated regular season and won the Pac-12 and IRA National Championships. In the 2014 and 2015 seasons he coxed the UW Varsity 8+ to consecutive wins at Pac 12 and the IRAs, before taking a year out to pursue an Olympic campaign with the Australian M8+. He returned for the 2017 season and won the Schoch Cup, Windermere Cup, and Pac-12 Championships. Sim retired after Tokyo 2020 and now works in the US at Frabrica, a digital real estate start-up.

It’s race day and I’m watching the clock count down. 7:35am. I said I’d be at the dock at 8am, I can’t be late. I’m not even racing but the timeliness of crew has been imprinted so deep in my psyche that it still makes me anxious.

I quickly wrap up my chicken rice and egg burrito on the stove and throw it in some foil and huck it into my bag. I’m trying to put as much weight between me and my former coxswain self. Looking outside I can’t read the weather. I think it’s raining, classic Seattle, but actually maybe it's not. Still, I grab a spare pair of pants because I don’t want to be spending the day on a yacht tied up on the log boom at Windermere Cup, watching UW take on the Australian National Team and all the other races while wearing wet pants. Damn, I’ve gotten soft. A stark contrast to being OK sitting as a coxswain in freezing temperature, on a cold winter row, where icicles form underneath the riggers. In those sessions, you just know it’s going to be cold, and you are good with it. You sit still and once the practice starts the cold disappears. You don’t realize your legs are numb until the boat pulls back to the dock at the end, and you somehow fall upwards out of your seat onto a wet dock. The guys try to find their slides or sneakers in as few steps as possible to avoid wet socks, but you are already soaked so who cares.