At the weekend I raced Lucerne [Switzerland] in the final race of the Rowing World Cup Series. The Series is made up of three European races, generally used to prepare crews for the World Championships later in the year. This year the GB team only competed at two of the three races due to Ecoli infection concerns in the Hamburg region.
This is the first time I had raced in Lucerne and so enjoyed the change of scene. Lucerne has a certain "je ne sais quoi" about it. It is pretty much always been the last race in the World Cup Series and so always has a strong attendance as all nations want to test themselves against the best, before the World Champs. The course is set in a tight valley along a thin long lake, only just big enough to hold an Olympic size course; as a result the weather can change very quickly with dramatic effect. Above is a picture of us in our 8 the day before racing, below is a youtube clip of the very same storm - watch out for the size of the hail stones!
Racing started on the Friday; we needed to win the race to go straight to the final, any other position and we would have to race the repercharge the next day. The photo on the left below is the photo finish from the heat. We lost out to the Dutch National 8 by 0.01 seconds - the race took 5mins 30 and meant we lost by a margin of less than an inch over 2000km [or 78,740 inches]. Unbelievably tight and a kick in the teeth as we had beaten the Dutch in every race in Munich some weeks earlier.
This meant we had to race in the repercharge on Saturday to secure our place in the A-Final. Our main opposition were the French and Polish. We had beaten both crews in Munich (where the Poles came third, ahead of the Dutch). A strong sense of deja vu swept over us and again found ourselves in a tight battle on the line. This time losing out to the Poles by 0.23 seconds, but well clear of the French and Ukrainians.
This wasn't an easy or nice situation to be in, we had come to Lucerne believing we were at least ranking second in the World and were ready to take the challenge to the Germans; now we had been beaten by Dutch, Polish and had seen the Americans run the Germans closer than we have so far this season - and then see that American crew be beaten by a re-invigorated Canadian 8. It meant racing was going to be unbelievably tight and we could end up being 6th, within several hundredths of a second of several other crews. The final would require us to step up big time. Below is the photo finish, this time missing out to the Dutch by 0.04 secs, coming in 3rd ahead of the USA. You can watch the race here on the BBC (including Greg's video diary) or here on the World Rowing website (click on the Men's 8 in the bottom right to view our race)
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