Here’s the man who went viral for rowing during a Cruz rally

So it turns out that rowing dude had a pretty good reason to ignore Ted Cruz on caucus day while the presidential candidate spoke to a crowd in Iowa.

Jason Roberts is an Australian citizen, who came to the U.S. back in the mid-’90s to play college baseball and never left. So Roberts, who’s 39, married and has four kids, can’t vote.

But Roberts told Yahoo News he did question whether he should go ahead with his workout on Monday when he showed up and saw that Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, was speaking to several hundred Iowans in the gymnasium of the local community center in Jefferson, Iowa.

“I was working most of the morning, and I thought, ‘I want to go blow off some steam and get a workout in,’” Roberts said. But when he pulled into the parking lot, it was full, and he saw the signs for Cruz.

Roberts needed a cardiovascular workout. Physical fitness is part of his job. He’s an athletic trainer for the Texas Rangers baseball team, overseeing all of the Rangers’ minor league teams. He’s worked with some of the biggest stars in Major League Baseball, from the Rangers’ Josh Hamilton to Matt Kemp when Roberts worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to run or row,” Robert said, “but I hadn’t rowed in a while.”

Roberts debated it. He knew the machine was loud and would be audible to Cruz and everyone else in the room. “I gave him 10 or 15 minutes and then I thought, ‘He’s got a microphone. Everybody can hear him. I’m gonna go ahead and get a workout in,” Roberts said.

Roberts put his headphones in his ears, tuned his Pandora app to a Foo Fighters station, and got after it.

I was standing across the gym with a clear view of Roberts. His rowing probably wouldn’t have caught my attention as much if it hadn’t been so loud. Cruz spokeswoman Alice Stewart was standing under Roberts and couldn’t see him.

“I was wondering what that noise was,” she said when I showed her the video of Roberts.

But Cruz ignored the distraction, and the whooshing sound lent a comedic “only in Iowa” air to the event. “It didn’t seem like he missed a beat, and nobody came and tapped me on the shoulder and told me to leave,” Roberts said.

I took video and tweeted it, and “rowing dude” went viral, racking up over 2,000 retweets. A member of the 2012 gold medalist U.S. women’s rowing team retweeted it. GQ and New York magazine wrote about it. And, a bit unexpectedly, many rowers chimed in on Roberts’ form.

“Sad that rowing dude doesn’t have very good form,” wrote Sarah Leiseca, a Washington, D.C., resident who rows with a volunteer club on the Anacostia River.

“God awful form but hilarious,” wrote Samuel Stewart, a Georgia Tech student.

One critic was a bit more specific. “Your hands are dropping at the catch,” wrote Elizabeth April, an analyst and activist in Democratic politics, also a D.C. resident.

Roberts said he was surprised by the criticism.

“I didn’t think [my form] was that bad until I heard all the criticism,” he said. “It definitely got me rethinking how I approach it.” The problem, Roberts said, is that “in a small town in Iowa, trying to find someone who’s proficient in rowing technique is kind of tough.”

Roberts lives most of the year in Jefferson, population 4,345, about an hour from Des Moines. But he’s heading to spring training in Arizona next week. And most summers he’s in Texas.

Robert said Cruz reminded him of many Texans he had encountered who are “self-centered with huge egos.”

“I think Cruz fits right in with that crowd,” Roberts said.

Roberts said that if he were to vote, he’d be a Democrat. “I really have no interest in the Republican side at all. It’s tough to watch these guys at times and listen to them.”

Especially for Roberts, since he can’t vote, the caucuses in Iowa every four years — which kick off the presidential primary process and attract massive amounts of media attention and TV and radio ads — become “white noise in the background.”

“Leading up to the caucus, it becomes quite loud noise,” Roberts said.

His solution: a rowing machine — and the Foo Fighters.