“When everyone is so dialled in on one dream, it’s amazing what you can do.” Nikita Jacobs on U23 success
On The End of The Island Podcast, Fergus Mainland spoke with Cox Nikita Jacobs about his GB debut
Great Britain returned from Poznan with four incredible gold medals, topping the medal table once again. For the second year in a row, the British won gold in the Women’s Eight. It was a boat oozing experience. Three returned from last year’s victorious outfit in the form of Abigail Dawson, Alice Baker, and Olivia Hill, but new in the coxing seat was Nikita Jacobs, who’s just finished his Sophomore year at the University of Washington.
For Jacobs, this wasn’t just a U23 debut. It was the first time wearing the famous red and white hoops, but also the first time coxing women. While the former Radley College BC cox has been involved with some special projects during his rowing career, this new challenge tested him in a different set of ways, but he was eager to grab the proverbial bull by the horns and learn from as many people as he could in the lead-up to selection.
For those studying in the United States of America, the weeks following the IRA and NCAA National Championship Regatta can be a bit of a whirlwind. Athletes need to readjust to life and rowing in the U.K., and for Jacobs and the other students, training camps at Caversham and Marlow were awaiting them before taking on Henley Royal Regatta, the Ladies’ Challenge Plate for the Husky. After Henley comes final selection, and it was here that Jacobs learned about the next captivating project he would be involved with.
“We had to get all our selection decisions done the Wednesday after Henley. It was fast-paced, and there were a lot of tough decisions to be made, but they did a really good job.
“Then I got selected, and I’d never coxed a women’s eight before in my life, never really done anything in women’s rowing before so I was shocked it was me for the Women’s Eight but I was really excited because the whole season I was saying that I’d love to do the Women’s Eight and that it would be a cool experience and new skills to develop.
“For me personally, it was good to step away from men’s rowing for a bit and go into this new path of the Women’s Eight so I didn’t know many of them before at all. I knew one person, Jess who is at Washington and she was my seven seat. I think that was quite nice knowing her but I was going in to the dark, not knowing what was going on,” he explained.
It’s clear that this was something Jacobs had been thinking about throughout the season. UW’s women’s programme is one of the finest programmes on the other side of the pond. Led by the great Yaz Farooq, who herself was the cox for the first U.S. Women’s Eight to win the World Rowing Championships in 1995, there is a wealth of knowledge to tap into and learn from.
“At Washington, I’ve had a lot of interactions with the coaching staff on the women’s team. Especially during the trials period, I was asking a lot of questions to Yaz, a lot of questions to friends I had on the women’s team about coxing women. We never really have the opportunity to switch in and out because we’re focused on our specific projects, us with the IRAs, and the women with the NCAAs. It’s really tough to actually find the time to do that.”
One of the great strengths of the 2025 British Eight was the experience that all eight of the rowers were able to bring to the table. Seven out of the eight had won a gold medal at either U23 or U19s, and for Jacobs, this was incredibly important and allowed him to learn from all of them.
“I found it difficult at the start figuring out where do I look, who do I speak to when trying to figure out how I should be coxing the women’s boat. The first place I went to was the coaches. I was working with Brian Young, and he was really useful. He also had limited experience with a women’s boat. He’d never coached a Women’s Eight, so we were both kind of in the same shoes, but it was an incredible experience.
“Because we had that, a lot of the athletes stood up and brought a lot of leadership to that, and I have to give them a lot of credit. All I was looking for was knowledge from the athletes. By the end of it, there was a lot of feedback, ‘How do you like to work in the middle of the race? Would you like me to be more aggressive, less aggressive? How do I motivate you?’ That sort of thing. So, it was useful to have the experience in that Women’s Eight.
“We were training at Caversham, and the first few days were figuring out what was going to be our thing and what was going to be our distinctive factor as a crew. I think having that experience of having people at worlds before, having that pressure, knowing all those experiences from the year before, especially really set us up nicely to define our crew super-fast. We did a really good job in those first few days, just breaking it down and talking, getting everyone on the same page. I think that experience really set us up and set us apart from the other crews out there.”
Once the crew were out in Poznan, it became clear that this was a special group of athletes, capable of an awesome result. The crew clocked the fastest time in the heats and led at every marker in their opening round of racing, and the final was a spectacular carbon copy.
“We never really thought we had an extremely hot start, but we saw in the heat and the final that we stepped out to nearly a full length by 500m. We knew we wanted to take control from stroke one, but I think you can take control of the race if you’re up or down.
“We were in control the whole time, and then about the one kilometre marker, we knew the Americans were going to charge at us really hard through halfway, and we stepped into the second half and held them off really nicely and then about 1250 it started to sink in for everyone.
“We knew we were out there; from the start, it was our race to lose. By that point in the race, we were so dialled in to each stroke, you’re just trying to focus on each individual stroke, so it’s hard to zoom out when you’re in the middle of the race, but I think 1250 was probably the moment when we all thought that this was our race.”
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For Jacobs, this campaign was a momentous one. It felt like a new chapter after having a self-described rebuilding year after a tough end to the 2024 season. From a Husky point of view, this year’s U23 were particularly poignant for Jacobs and crewmate Cameron Tasker. Both Old Radleians came agonisingly close to a gold medal at the IRAs, falling to Harvard by 0.03s in the Grand Final of the Third Varsity Eight.
“That IRA is really going to stick with me and him. It was a really tough reason for both of us coming off the back of ’24 with the Henley campaign and the Grand Challenge Cup and everything like that. This year was really a rebuild year for me to try and get my confidence back, try to get back onto the top, and unfortunately, I struggled with a lot of injuries throughout the whole season.
“He came into the Third Varsity Eight towards the end of the season and really helped us a lot, but that entire race; there was 0.03s at the end, photo finish, it’s something that is really going to motivate me for the rest of my college career. He was stroking the Men’s Eight that went out there [to Poznan]and dominated, I was coxing the Women’s Eight, it was pretty cool to be out there together, especially after the season we’d had.”
For Jacobs, this has been a British debut for the ages, and there’s a huge amount of learnings he can take forward. He’s learned about how quickly you can pull together a world-class crew, as well as the differences in motivating women, the technical aspects, and how the boat feels. He’s loved the journey and everything that’s come with it.
“Post UW, I’d love to do a season or something like that, but I’m at the university for the men’s team. When I was looking at going to the US, I wanted to be there at that programme with that coaching staff and that team culture, and I think I’m completely set on that, so I’m going to complete my four years there and then maybe coming back to the UK, let’s see what happens.
“We’re at this really golden era of Washington rowing where we’ve just got to keep on it the whole time and that’s the really exciting bit about it, we’ve got this amazing coaching staff, we’ve got these amazing athletes and it seem to be this really, really team driving mentality right now and that’s something I want to carry on and all the guys there want to carry on and carry on the success of the programme.”
