Help Puerto Rico's First Woman Olympic Rower!

On March 5, 2021 at the Lagõa de Freitas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I became Puerto Rico's first woman Olympic rower. It was a long, hard journey to get there, starting my freshman year at MIT, but it sure was worth the ride; so far, this is one of the proudest moments of my life. It embodies the ideal I aim to represent, and the message I aim to convey: YES WE CAN, as women and as Puerto Ricans.



My Coach, Francisco Viacava, and I are fully committed to representing Puerto Rico at the highest level at the Olympics. In order to do this, we have to train harder than ever, even at high altitude and travel internationally to compete. During the next 5 months, we will be fully dedicated to this endeavor (time for which my coach well deserves to be compensated) and we will be incurring a lot of additional costs, including airfare, car rentals, equipment transport/rental, hotels, food, electrolytes, supplements. Therefore, any contribution you can give will be greatly appreciated!



A little background about myself:

My name is Veronica Toro Arana and I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, where I attended Academia San Jose and graduated in 2012. I started rowing as a freshman in college at MIT, where I obtained my Bachelor’s in Biological Engineering in 2016. While being part of the First Varsity Eight of the MIT Woman’s Open Weight Crew, I started competing as the Woman Single sculler for Puerto Rico in 2014. 



Since then, I have represented Puerto Rico in four World Rowing Championships, the Veracruz 2014 and Barranquilla 2018 Central America and Caribbean Games, the Lima 2019 Pan-American Games, a World Rowing Cup, a Central America and Caribbean Rowing Cup, among other international competitions. I have been named Rowing athlete of the year for Puerto Rico in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. In 2019, I made it to the A Final at the Pan-American Games, made it to the Quarterfinals at the World Rowing Championships, was sixth at the US Rowing Nationals, and within the top 8 times at the US Rowing W1x Senior Trials.  This year I placed fifth at the Americas Continental Olympic Qualification Regatta to earn Puerto Rico's first Olympic spot in the women's single skiff (W1x) event.



Outside of rowing, I am a student at Stanford School of Medicine, hoping to become a Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgeon. I have already completed my first 2.5 years of Medical School, including some clinical rotations, and am currently on a leave of absence training full time at Miami International RowHouse with Coach Francisco Viacava, and remotely conducting research for the Stanford Cardiovascular Biomechanics Computational Lab. My research focuses on predicting surgery outcomes in children with a congenital heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot; it was presented at the 2018 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions Conference, will be presented at the 2021 American College of Cardiology Scientific Session, and will be published in a medical journal soon. 



The following is our upcoming travel and competition schedule until the Olympics:
World Rowing Cup III (Sabaudia, ITA) – June 4-6, 2021
***We will be traveling to Italy May 28, 2021.
Pre-Olympic Training Camp (Sabaudia, ITA) – June 7-July 15
*** We will be traveling straight from Europe to Japan.
Olympic Games (Tokyo, JPN)– July 23 - August 8, 2021


Here is a video of us celebrating the qualification! I hope you enjoy it :D



Thank you so much for your donation!!

Vero and Coach Franky