For over a decade, Oliver Bub has chased a dream.
Even if he’s spent the entire time going backwards to reach it.
The 2016 Staples High School graduate has just been named to USRowing’s national team. This summer, he heads to Paris to race in the Olympics.
Rowing is a natural sport for Bub — and not just because he’s 6-6. Both parents rowed at Boston University; his 2 older brothers were rowers too. Every year the family headed to Boston, to watch the Head of the Charles races.
As a freshman, Bub joined the Saugatuck Rowing Club program. It was a perfect fit.
“It’s such a great team sport,” he says. “You’re quite literally in the same boat as your teammates.” The people he met through rowing remain his closest friends.
Bub achieved plenty of success. He and fellow Staples 11th grader Lucas Manning won the Junior Nationals pairs race, then finished 9th at the world competition in Rio de Janeiro.
Oliver Bub (center), with Saugatuck Rowing Club coach Sharon Kriz and teammate Lucas Manning.
He gives much of the credit to SRC’s former head coach Sharon Kriz, and former assistant (now head) coach Dave Grossman.
“Their early guidance was so helpful,” Bub says. “I’m super grateful.”
Colleges came calling. He chose Dartmouth, whose coach was a 2-time Olympian. Bub earned Freshman of the Year honors in 2016-17.
But his senior season was canceled by COVID.
Graduating with a degree in economics, Bub took a job with Citibank’s Bay Area tech lending group.
In June of 2023 he was chosen for the senior national team, to compete in Belgrade. He a bold move: He left the industry, to train full time.
Oliver Bub, on the water.
Rowing is not a lucrative sport. USRowing and the US Olympic Committee offer small stipends. He’s lived off savings, in Oakland.
It’s a frugal life (though, Bub admits, “I do eat a lot”).
He spends his days training and racing with the California Rowing Club. “It’s a simple life. I don’t have the daily stresses that could get in the way of optimized performance,” he says. “I’m always keeping the end goal in mind.”
That goal grows closer every day.
Bub will spend the next 6 weeks training with the team in Oakland. (It helps that it’s now his home city.)
Then he’s off to Lucerne, Switzerland, where the US will face many of the boats they’ll see at the Olympics.
Back in the US, they’ll train at Dartmouth (another “homecoming”) and Princeton, then compete in Italy. After that: Paris.
Bub’s teammate in men’s pair is Billy Bender, a Dartmouth student taking his senior year off to concentrate on the Olympics. Last year, with another partner, Bender placed 5th in the world championship.
Oliver Bub and Billy Bender, earlier this month.
Bender and Bub’s aim is simple: to win a medal. “There’s no real difference after third,” Bub notes.
When that race is over — after 11 years of grueling work, for a few fleeting minutes on the world stage — Bub will …
Well, he’s not sure.
“It will be time to get back to work, move on with my career,” he says. “I probably should figure it out.”
While he expects to spend a year away from competitive rowing, he won’t give up certain routines.
“I enjoy exercising and working out, so I expect to continue that,” Bub says.
“And If rowing calls my name back — we’ll see.”
(Hat tip: Lisa Marriott)
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This is an awesome accomplishment. Are there other Olympians in Westport’s history?
Several. Here’s one who comes quickly to mind: https://06880danwoog.com/2022/03/02/catching-up-and-air-with-julia-marino/
And further back: https://06880danwoog.com/2012/08/04/ann-marie-flynn-westports-own-olympian/
Sharon Kriz, Dave Grossman, and quite frankly all of the coaches without exception at SRC are in a class of their own.
I wish Oliver all the success in the world.