Central Catholic grad Michael Grady continues training for shot at Olympics

Thanks to the pandemic, Bradford Woods product Michael Grady improved his chances of making next year’s U.S. Olympic rowing team.

USRowing men’s coach Mike Teti said Grady, 23, will have more time to work on his mechanics after the Tokyo Games were postponed.

“He was a candidate anyway,” Teti said. “This will help.”

Grady, a Central Catholic graduate and former Cornell rower, has been practicing at the USRowing Training Center-Oakland in California the past year.

Because of coronavirus restrictions, he is rowing only single sculls.

“This is different,” he said. “We are training to make the Olympics as (sweep rowers) and not (scullers).

“From what the older guys are telling me, Olympic years are the most intense physically and mentally. We will have to undergo two Olympic (training) years in a row.”

Teti does not know when Grady, a 2018 World Rowing Under 23 Championships gold medalist in men’s eight, will compete.

“We’re training in a holding pattern,” Teti said.

The 6-foot-5, 205-pound Grady was seated first in the training-center boat that won in men’s championship eights in the Head of the Charles Regatta last October in Cambridge, Mass.

The regatta is the world’s largest two-day rowing event.

The boat edged a training-center entry whose lineup included seven senior national team members.

Alex Miklasevich, of Forest Hills, a teammate of Grady at Central Catholic, competed with Grady.

Miklasevich, a former Brown rower, also is an Olympic team candidate.

“Alex (is) still doing really well, too,” Teti said.