BELGRADE, SERBIA — Numerous Old Lyme Rowing Association / Blood Street Sculls members represented the United States in the 2023 World Rowing Championships held Sept. 3-10 in Belgrade, Serbia.
Liam Corrigan, who graduated from Lyme-Old Lyme High School (LOLHS) in 2015, stroked the Men’s Four to a silver medal, qualifying the boat for the Paris Olympics in 2024.
After graduating from LOLHS, Corrigan attended Harvard University, where he was ultimately captain of the rowing team. He subsequently moved to California, where he continues his rowing career with the California Rowing Club. Corrigan’s parents, Brian Corrigan and Joan Rivington, live in Lyme having moved there in 2020 from Old Lyme, where they had lived for many years.
The 2021 Tokyo Olympics saw Corrigan along with Old Lyme native and 2010 LOLHS graduate Austin Hack row in the US Men’s Eight boat, which ultimately just missed out on a medal coming in a photo-finish fourth in the final.
This year’s World Championships also acted as the first qualifying event for countries for the 2024 Paris Olympics. In total, the U.S. won seven medals and qualified 10 boats for Paris (eight Olympic and two Paralympic) over the eight-day regatta.
The U.S. finished fourth in total medals.
The U.S. won silver in the women’s eight, PR3 mixed double sculls, PR3 mixed four with coxswain, lightweight women’s double sculls, and men’s four, as well as bronze in the women’s double sculls and lightweight women’s single sculls. PR3 is a one of three classes of para-rowing in which the athletes have physical impairments, visual impairment and/or intellectual disabilities. The PR3 sport class is for rowers, who have the use of their legs, trunk and arms and can use the sliding seat.
The U.S. qualified the women’s single sculls, women’s double sculls, lightweight women’s double sculls, women’s pair, men’s pair, men’s four, women’s four, and women’s eight for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, as well as the PR3 mixed double sculls and the PR3 mixed four with coxswain for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
Ben Washburne of Madison, Conn., and former Blood Street Sculls member (second from right in photo) also won silver in the PR3 Mixed Coxed Four qualifying for Paris.
Another former Blood Street Sculls rower Dominique Williams, also of Madison, Conn., and his crew finished 9th in the Men’s Quadruple Sculls and will have a chance to qualify next spring at the final Olympic qualification regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland. Williams’s US boat is pictured at right in photo below.
Blood Street Sculls was also represented in the 2023 World Rowing Championships by Nobuhisa Ishizuka, who lives in Madison, Conn., and is a Blood Streets Sculls Masters Rower.
Ishizuka joined the US Rowing Board of Directors in 2018 and serves as President of US Rowing. He was in attendance at the 2023 World Rowing Championships as the head of the US delegation.