Tuesday 31 May 2011

Silver in Munich

For those of you that havn't seen the race, you can view it here on the BBC.

Some rowing trivia for you - when you line up on the start line you can be easily blown by the wind as you try and hold your position.  Two things help you stay in a straight line and make sure that you all start exactly on the line. 1) The stakeboat boy/girl - my brother Ben is hoping to be one at the Olympics and basically consists of hold the end of the boat while lying on your front on a pontoon. 2) Electronic "Clog" system - "Clogs" (they look like a lunch box) are raised from under the water, when you are held by the stakeboat boy/girl.  Its a small perspex box where you position your boat so that if the wind blows across the boat won't move.  The starting system is all electronic, so when the buzzer and lights go, the clog drops (fast) and releases all six eights like greyhounds at a dog track.  If you click on the link to the footage above, you can see a small splash of water at the front of the boat when the buzzer goes, that's the clog retracting back to its watery grave.

All in all, it was a strong weekend of racing for GB Rowing and my crew was very much part of that.  We had four strong races and performed consistently against the rest of the field.  I, and the rest of my crew, don't get up in the morning to collect a silver medal - we are here for one thing, and that thing is to beat people; but what is positive from the weekend is that we tried a few things, we raced honestly and we have clear focus' for the coming weeks.  What was very clear to me was that we were the only eight (bar possibly the French) to have total faith in our own programme.  On the first day we had two races; one a time trial, the other our heat [report here].  With the exception of France, we were the only crew to totally commit to the time trial.  In my eyes that can be for only one reason - that they didn't want to put themselves at a disadvantage during the "real" racing and therefore conserved energy aka they didn't know if they could still perform under extra pressure/fatigue and therefore opted out.  The World Cup races are very important races (they are 3/4 of the main international races we do each year), but they are a means towards the World Championships (which are a means towards our primary goal, the Olympic games).  It's important to use every opportunity on that path, and I feel we used our weekend well.  We raced Sunday afternoon and I was back training 7:30am Monday.


The next World Cup is in Hamburg [Germany] on the 17th-19th June.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds pretty cool to me. Old Cassop cheered all the way through the race! Love Emily x

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