When Pearl Outlaw ’20 and her partner, Josh Boissoneau, raced in the PR3 mixed double sculls at the 2018 World Rowing Championships in Bulgaria, everything that could have gone wrong did.

Boissoneau, who has a nervous system disorder, and Outlaw, who has retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder of the eyes that causes vision loss, compete in para-rowing, which is open to male and female rowers with disabilities who meet certain criteria. Pararowing, formerly called adaptive rowing, is integrated with the World Rowing Federation, and para-rowers compete alongside able-bodied athletes at international competitions. But things weren’t going well for Boissoneau and Outlaw.

“Josh was already trying to tough out a broken wrist,” she said. “Then we lost our bags, and when we went to get classified, Josh wasn’t able to, which essentially means they didn’t think he was disabled enough to row.”

The pair were eventually reclassified and cleared to race, but the stressful times didn’t make it easy to focus on the race, and the pair finished in fifth place.

A year later, at the 2019 World Rowing Championships in Austria, things once again threatened to go awry. “Josh actually fell off his seat at the start of the race,” Outlaw said. 

It could have been easy to let this start derail them. Instead, she and Boissoneau dug deep and wound up on the medal stand, clocking a third-place finish of 8:17:51, behind Russia and Austria.

“Despite everything that happened at the start, I just settled in and kept on pulling. After all that happened in 2018, it was nice to just focus on racing,” said Outlaw.

In the fall, she competed for the Bombers at the Head of the Charles race in Boston and is looking forward to the spring season. Although Outlaw will not try to qualify for the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, she isn’t closing the book on her international career.

“Earning this last medal has opened the door for other international competitions,” she said. “So I’m going to keep training and see what happens.”