Olympic medallist Joachim Sutton: From rowing the Pacific to targeting Paris 2024
Find out what it feels like rowing 4500km across the Pacific from Danish rower Joachim Sutton who did just that. Now the Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist hopes to make the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Ten-metre waves, broken oars and a daily diet of 10,000 calories.
Joachim Sutton remembers the World’s Toughest Row Pacific 2023 like it were yesterday.
The 28-year-old spent 31 days, 17 hours and 12 minutes rowing a staggering 4500km across the Pacific Ocean, starting from Monterey, California and ending in Kauai Island in Hawaii.
After completing the inaugural Pacific Challenge in the middle of July, Sutton and his three fellow Danes - childhood friend Andreas Dyrby, Lasse Wulf Hansen and Jens Peter Leschly Neergaard - could call themselves 'Ocean Warriors'.
“It’s an experience that is hugely introverted. You don't see anything. After we left the shore, and after day one, we could no longer see the coast," Sutton told Olympics.com about his once-in-a-lifetime adventure. "Then it took 30 days before we saw the coast again. Otherwise, we only saw water, no animals, no people - just water."
Less than two months later, Sutton and Frederic Vystavel - bronze medallists in the pair at Tokyo 2020 - were in Belgrade bidding for a Paris 2024 Olympic quota spot at the 2023 World Rowing Championships.
And Sutton admits it has not been easy to step back into the two-man boat:
"It makes no sense at all to mix the two things because they are so different. And you also destroy your body when you are on the Pacific Ocean rowing for 12-13 hours every day. And getting no food and no sleep make you completely wrecked."
The marathon mission was worth the effort, however, with the four raising $15,000 for the Danish Children's Cancer Foundation.
Joachim Sutton (R) with Frederic Vystavel after winning men's pair bronze at Tokyo 2020.
Joachim Sutton persuaded out of retirement by Pacific quest
Having achieved his dream of winning an Olympic medal, Sutton decided to end his rowing career after Tokyo 2020.
He focused on finishing his master’s degree in anthropology and started a ‘normal job’.
So far, so good.
But when two of his colleagues shared their idea of rowing the Pacific, Sutton's interest was piqued immediately as he sought a new challenge after retiring from competition.
"It sounded like fun, and I knew two buddies from my undergrad in Berkeley who had already done it. So it didn’t sound that crazy,” Sutton explained.
"But it made me want to try to go to the Olympics again. I had quite a lot of peace in my mind about what I had done, but I could feel that qualifying for another Olympics - while I also had to go on this trip - seemed very motivating.”
Danish rower Joachim Sutton reading the Ocean Warrior manual in Monterey, California.
Joachim Sutton: "It became like a monk's life"
One thing led to another, and soon Sutton found himself training and racing with Vystavel again.
On 12 June, two weeks after their second-place finish in the B Final at the European Championships in Slovenia, Sutton set off from the California coast with his three crewmates.
"We rowed for two hours, and then we were off the oars for two hours. And we just continued like that. So, I never got more than an hour and 40 minutes of sleep at a time that month. It became like a monk's life," recalls Sutton.
"Time also went by extremely fast because of the routine. It felt like you've only been out there for a week. It's hard, but you're almost in a kind of meditation."
For most people, rowing 12 hours a day would be exercise enough. But not for the Olympic medallist who needed to stay in top shape for the upcoming World Championships.
He said, "In addition to the rowing, I trained for about an hour a day to maintain the muscle mass. it was insanely difficult to get the heart rate up on those oars, because the boat was so heavy.
"Every other day I had an hour where I got off the oars, and then I just smashed squats, hip thrusters, push-ups and so on for an hour."
Joachim Sutton: Consuming 10,000 calories a day to stay fit
Maintaining his weight and muscle mass was also vital for Sutton with one of the crew losing over 20kg on a previous row across the Atlantic Ocean.
Sutton said, "I knew I had to be ready for the World Championships. I was very careful not to lose too much muscle mass, and I was eating about 10,000 calories a day. We had a lot of dry food with us, where you just need to add boiling water. I ate six a day, which was about 4,000 calories.”
“Then I had made snack bags. I had made enough for 40 days. It was just with Snickers, Mars, Milky Way, Twix and some nuts. You just sit and eat sweets all day. It sounds very delicious but when you are doing a really hard workout, you can lose your appetite a little.
"Sometimes the food came up again, I was throwing up and then swallowing it again. It was hard to endure.”
Joachim Sutton and a crewmate enjoy a swim in the Pacific Ocean.
Joachim Sutton: Broken oars, ten-metre waves and "simply wonderful" toilet breaks
The boat the Danish team used to cross the Pacific Ocean was just one and a half metres wide by 10 metres long.
It had two small cabins on each side, where the rowers could sleep, and GPS coordinates plugged in meaning the rudder would correct itself to go in the right direction.
Nevertheless, it is still hard to cross the Pacific Ocean without facing any setbacks. The team broke three oars within 24 hours and were challenged by massive waves.
“We rowed in 10 to 15-metre-high waves. These are not waves as we know them from the beach, where they break over the boat. There were some of the waves breaking a little bit over the boat, and if you sat with the oars down in your lap, the boat would tilt up to one side strongly,” Sutton said.
And how was the experience of being trapped on a tiny boat with nowhere to go?
“You have to be able to accommodate each other and of course yourself in your own head," he admitted. "When you are four people with different thoughts about how something should work or not work, it can get fairly intense.
"The social aspect was the biggest challenge. If you have a problem, you can just sit and stare at each other, right? Until it hopefully resolves itself.”
And using the bathroom?
“Visiting the toilet was simply wonderful. We had a green bucket that you just filled with a bit of salt water, and then you sat there on the deck and talked to each other for a bit. Then you do your business.
"It was actually very nice to sit there with a nice view. Of course, the boat tilts a little, so you sit straight and hold on to the sides and just hope the bucket doesn't tip over!"
Joachim Sutton on reaching the finish and onto the next goal
Sutton spent a great deal of time thinking about his physical condition with the World Championships in the back of his mind.
“I remember every time I laid down in the cabin relaxing, I would hold my breath. In the end, I think I could hold my breath for six minutes. Since I couldn’t train my lungs doing cardio, I had to hold my breath and train it that way,” he said.
The constant worry over his physique even meant that his celebrations were somewhat muted when the crew reached their final destination of Hawaii.
“It wasn't the feeling that; ‘It's great, now we're on land'", he said. "I was happy and kind of relieved but, in my head, I had already moved on. I tried to enjoy the trip, but every minute I was awake I thought about what I could do to reduce the damage.”
“It was, of course, insanely nice to meet your loved ones who had come all the way over to Hawaii. But it also didn't take more than 10 minutes before I had asked the crew if they had a scale with them so I could weigh myself. And I was a bit disappointed when I weighed 2kg less than when I started. So I couldn't eat as much as I had expected anyway."
While the epic trip may not have been the best physical preparation for the World Championships, it certainly helped him mentally.
He explained, "There is no doubt that I have not become a faster rower from rowing across the Pacific Ocean. I haven't gotten in better shape. But personally, I'm a big believer in imagining things and visualising things.
"On the Pacific Ocean you have plenty of time to visualise, how you would like things to unfold. If you do it enough, you can hardly tell the difference between dream and reality. If you have been so stuck in some thoughts and ideas about what will happen the next month, then you can find some peace with it.”
Joachim Sutton: "The goal is to qualify"
Sutton and Vystavel will find out in the coming months if that visualisation will bear fruit. Their goal is clear: “It's to qualify for the Olympics,” said Sutton.
"As long as we qualify then I will be beyond happy, and it may well be that a bit of emotion comes up. It would be a great story. The shape is good, and the strength has come back fairly quickly. Right now, we are actually going very well, so I am reasonably confident."
There were 11 Paris quota spots up for grabs in the men's pair in Belgrade and the duo had hoped to secure one for the Danish National Olympic Committee (NOC).
Racing in the B Final on Saturday, 9 September, Sutton and Vystavel finished sixth after Croatian brothers Patrik and Anton Loncaric produced a late sprint to overtake them. The top five boats secured Olympic quota spots.
The Danish pair can still obtain a Paris 2024 quota for their NOC through the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta, tentatively scheduled for May 2024.
As NOCs have the exclusive authority for the representation of their respective countries at the Olympic Games, athletes' participation at the Paris Games depends on their NOC selecting them to represent their delegation at Paris 2024.