Nick's Blog
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Well we got the call this morning, so it is official, we are going to the Olympics! Kind of hard to comprehend, cos it seems so normal in some ways. Though it is a bit of a relief, in the end I wasn't that worried, Nothing compared to the stress of the qualifiers last year!
Another slightly frustrating weekend. But some good progress in the right direction and we expect our selection to be confirmed tomorrow and announced on Thursday. In the final of the qualification regatta for the last 2 slots in our event there was a bit of a surpirse with the serbian crew winning ahead of the austrians. The chilians who got bronze in munic came 3rd, Once again they peaked too soon. Interesting we beat the serbians out in Poznan at the first world cup.
Once again we got the nastiest heat draw with rus,den,ire,usa and us, with 3 through. The spanish who we beat on Poland just had to beat the Austrian and chinese second crews, both of whom seemed to be saving themselves for the rep when we saw them on our warm down. There was a brisk tail wind in the 2 hours before our race so Marty decided to harden our gearing by lengthening our blades, which we have done before in a tailwind. Unfortunately by the time we got to the start it had swung round to a pretty hefty headwind, so it was rather heavy and we went over much of the race only rating 34 instead of our usual 37. Probably party due to this, the americans got away with the irish and the danes but we managed to row down the russians with about 500 to go. The first time we had beaten them for a while.
In the rep, we had an alright row, The indonnesians and austrian second boat were slow as expected but the chinese boat annoyingly wouldn't gow away even when we had a lengthon them by 1000m, perhaps a good thing as it forced us to row through the japanese but we didn't quite get through the russians that time.
In the semi, once again we managed our tick of getting the harder one, with 1,2,3 and 5 from last year, the other one became even easier when the germans withdrew, they didn't seem to be going that well, someone was probably ill. We were in lane 6 and got loads os wash from launches, it seemed we might beat the americans but the wash pushed us onto the bouys at 500 to go and trig caught is blade round one so we lost at leats 3/4 of a length there when the boat pretty much stopped. Surprisingly the danes were the ones not to make it from our semi and the italians won the semi convincingly.
So to the B final, after rising at 5am to sweat down for a 7:15 weigh in we heard that someone had seen the danes going out in their glad rags at 9:45 the previous night, so with the germans out as well we just had 4 boats in the b final, the japs, yanks and russians all of whom we are racing for the second or third time. We had an ok start but poor second 500m finding if just abit hard to find the rythmn togther so we were 2.5s down at 1000m, but then we got it together better and charged in past the japs in the last 500m, and we though the russians in the last 200m and closed right up on the yanks, though not quite enough. So we were pretty gutted to find out that we lost to the russians buy 0.12s, the yanks by 0.7s. Loads closer than the heat on the yanks, about a length better then the rep on the russians and the japs and much closer than last year or munich, but still annoying not to beat them. However there are still plenty of areas to work on in the next 8 weeks till the first race in athens, much of that time we are spending on camp, but first we have 2 days off to refresh ourselves so I'm about to leave to visit my sister and niece in Cambridge.
I guess only rowers will havemade it through all that but well done to any non rowers who made sense of it!
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
We had a slightly dissapointing weekend out in munich. Finishing 12 out of 13 crews. However is did gt some useful stuff out of the weekend. Only 4 seconds separated 7th from 12th in the B final and we were just 0.1s behind 11th. But we did think that we had a reasonably good row, which is probably a worse feeling than just having a bad one. With several of hte crews ahead of us peaking for the final olympic qualifying regatta in just 2 weeks, notably chile who were 20th last year got a bronze in munich, and they were similarly quick at this stage last season, we will be looking to overtake crews in the coming weeks, much as we did last year.
So while we do feel that we are on the right lines, (though we didn't have the best preparation before the regatta with injury and illness) we are trying out some different crew orders, at the moment, swapping Mark And I over so I'm rowing at 3 and we have a conventional rig. And neither the crew selection or the members of the crew selection is yet confirmed, with the possibility of trying out one or both othe the pair in the crew at the end of this week, begining of next week.
Since I like stroking I'm not overly keen on the current change, (this bit just for rowers) though the catch is easier to do at 3, and we may be able to get a more even load on the stroksiders mark has a tendency to row with slower hands and less patience in the last 1/4 of the slide than me, which I feel gives us less feeling of time in the new order. But we did do some good work in this order in seville earlier in the year.
So it is all a bit stressful at the moment, with everyone wanting to make it better, but also
having their own ideas about exactly how to more forward.
