Rainer Storb, MD, is a professor of medicine at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and the Milton B. Ruben Family Endowed Chair.
When did you start rowing, and how did it develop into a passion?
I didn’t start rowing until I was in my late 40s. Living on Lake Washington in Seattle, I discovered a very clumsy open water rowing shell. I brought it home and fell in love with rowing. I learned on my own; I bought a book and made sure I did the rowing stroke correctly, and that was it. Our young son fit into that boat, and he rode along with me. As my son got older, he started rowing, and then we took some lessons from experienced coaches.
Eventually, I advanced to sleeker boats and eventually also to team boats, and I discovered a love for open water rowing, for adventuring out into Puget Sound, into the ocean. That has remained my passion; I rarely do a 1,000-meter sprint race because it is, by comparison, boring.
When did you start racing competitively, and how did that evolve?
In 1989, I discovered an open water rowing and paddling group called Sound Rowers and Paddlers. It’s a loose group of people focused on rowing in the open water, and they organize 10 to 14 races a year ranging from 6 to 26.5 miles. When racing, you’re confronted with tidal differences that can be up to 14 feet, along with tidal current changes, and you’re exposed to wind and to marine traffic, and sometimes you can see marine mammals popping up next to you. It’s both challenging and fascinating. Those races are very competitive, but the people in the races have a great camaraderie. Racers range from weekend paddlers to Olympic champions.
I did my first Sound Rowers race in 1989 and won the Bainbridge Island Marathon for the first time in 1991. Until 2001, all the races were done in singles. In 2001, a Maas double came on the market, and I competed in doubles, including 10 races from Corvallis to Portland (115 miles) on the meandering Willamette River. From 2014 on, I did most races in the four-seat quad built by Chris Maas.
I race often with my son, Adrian, and a pair of brothers in their 30s, Cody and Kelton Jenkins. I used to be the navigator in the bow, but two years ago, Cody wanted to steer, and I gladly gave him the task.
I raced in the Bainbridge Island Marathon last September. It’s a hard race because of the distance, strong tides, two tidal passages with opposing flow, unpredictable wind and weather conditions, and marine traffic. Among the high points were seeing pilot whales, sea lions, seals, porpoises, and — eclipsing all — hearing the finish horn.
Your four-man rowing team is heavily awarded. What is your secret, and what challenges have you faced?
You must have a lot of endurance, your strokes must be coordinated, and you must be really focused on doing the best you can and on winning.
Some races we have not been able to finish. We have hit reefs several times, poking a hole in the shell’s hull, and either quit or became really slow because of water rushing in. Four years ago, we gave up on the Bainbridge Island Marathon because our rudder essentially came apart as a result of heavy wave action.
Dr. Storb, right, helps Jeff Bernard ready the quad for the
Sausage Pull race in September 2024.
One race where we faced challenges was on Lake Whatcom in May 2022. When I steer, I wear a baseball cap with a rearview mirror attached, but as it turned out, my wife’s little dog, Cricket — a Cairn terrier — had chewed the connection in the back of the hat, and it was broken. I discovered this two minutes before we launched. I tried to fix it, and it worked for a couple of miles, and then the hat was suddenly on my nose. We were being drafted by four or five fast, high-performance double surf skis, and when we stopped so I could fix it, all the surf skis slipped by. Then, after another half a mile, it was done, so I tossed cap and mirror into the footwell, and I rowed semi-blindly. We passed one of the surf skis and allowed them to draft us again as they guided us with shouts of “port,” “even,” “starboard!” Once we were past Reveille Island, I said, “It’s point to point from here.” Eventually, we won by six and seven seconds, respectively. It was a bit frustrating. I talked to Cricket afterwards, but he wasn’t interested.
Beyond racing, what role does rowing play in your life?
I rowed to and from work for 16 years. It was about a nine-mile round trip, and on some days, it was calm in the morning, but the winds came up in the evening. I stopped doing it over the last several winters. It was a bit of a challenging adventure because, on windy days, the waves can get really big where we live. I would land at a ladder, get out quickly onto the ladder, and grab the boat’s bow. I had to walk up the ladder while holding the boat in one hand and pulling it up. With increasingly heavy winter winds, I decided it was just a bit too risky.
Additionally, my wife and I organized the Sausage Pull since 1992, a 14.3-mile-long race around Lake Washington’s Mercer Island. The race grew from initially 26 racers to almost 100 boats last year. All muscle-powered boats are welcome in these races; you have rowing shells, high-performance surf skis, racing kayaks, dragon boats, outrigger canoers, and so on. Beverly was a great organizer. I stopped racing in the Sausage Pull in 2023, the year she died from Parkinson disease. I handed my boat over to my son and three rowing friends, and they won the race. Until three years ago, I did race, and we won a bunch of times with the single, the double, and the crew.
Do you have any rowing goals for the future?
Continue as long as I can. It keeps me healthy and mentally alert, so I would like to continue.
Also, we are thinking about redesigning the four-person boat. In the Bainbridge marathon in September, we avoided a couple of the ferries, but then a big, very fast boat ruthlessly crossed our bow, the wave went over our heads, and the boat was totally filled with water. It takes the current bailing system a while to get the water out, and if there were rough conditions, you would maybe never get it out. So, we have designed a mechanism that would enable one to get the water out more quickly. When I’m retired, I might focus on boat building ... and then testing them out.
That sounds like the engineer in you coming out.
Probably. It always interested me to look at machinery and figure out how it works, but in my family, there was no precedent for this. My dad was a physician, my grandfather was a physician, and so I eventually said, “Let’s go to medical school.” It became a passion during medical school — the interest in figuring out the unknown got me into research.
What parallels do you find between rowing and your work as a hematologist?
Rowing is just a graceful sport. You spend a lot of energy, of course, but it moves your whole body; it’s rhythmic, and when the boat is rowed well, it just flies and gives you a good feeling. At work, it’s a totally different story. I don’t see any real parallels, except that staying power is important, don’t be discouraged, and continue growing — continue working.
What does rowing do for you personally, and why do you keep returning to it?
Dr. Storb, far right, wearing his steering cap and rearview mirror,
waits with teammates (L-R) Cody Jenkins, Kelton Jenkins, and
Adrian Storb for the start of the 12-mile Lake Whatcom race.
It gives me satisfaction. I look forward it. It makes me feel good, and it calms me down.
My son and I row on the weekends together, and then one or two days a week, we row after work, each time around 14 kilometers. Rowing fosters good connections. You can’t fight in the boat. It just doesn’t work. You learn how to get along and how to respect each other.
When Adrian and I row with the Jenkins brothers, those rows get punctuated by up to five 1,000-meter sprints at 80% to 90% power, which keeps us in shape, though breathless.
We also have lots of different friends with whom we row. They’re all younger than I am. I’m 89, and unfortunately, in my age rank there aren’t that many rowers. So I meet other people from all walks of life. There’s a broad spectrum of individuals who I respect and with whom I compete or row, and that’s very precious to me. Otherwise, I’m limited to the medical or biologic research group that I’m exposed to daily; rowing has been widening my horizons.
Additionally, I think rowing is a good counterpoint to intellectual work. I’ve always been, even as a child, very active. In rowing, I spend so much energy, especially with these “young boys,” that I no longer am as restless. I think all this activity enables me to be more focused on research, seeing patients, writing papers, and mentoring young people.
