The 2nd World Cup of the season saw a change from the eight into a pair with Cameron Nichol. This had been the original plan for the 1st World Cup, and with on and off opportunities to get out in the boat, we were finally given the nod a week before the event in Lucerne.
Over the week build-up we concentrated on positive actions that would bring us speed. It's often easy to get caught up with what isn't right and address those technical points until they are fixed. But with a short amount of time, the real priority was working out what we could do pro-actively to put in a solid performance. With a few timed pieces under our belt, we had a few ideas on what did and didn't work.
Our heat went reasonably well, we drew the 3 x World Champions from New Zealand and Olympic Silver medalists from Canada. Three crews went through and we were able to pick up the 3rd position by picking crews off as we went down the course.
The semi was an opportunity to place a marker relative to the lead GB pair and gain a place in the A-final. We knew it would be a tough challenge and we looked to build off what we had done in our first race. But almost immediately we were dropped by the whole field, leaving a lot of work to do. Our start had been a bit ineffective and the other 5 crews just stepped away from us. The row on the whole wasn't bad, but due to being on the back foot so early on, meant we didn't quite find a good enough rhythm and came in 5th (needing a top three position to progress into the A-final).
Sunday offered a chance to show that Saturday had been a mistake and not a true reflection of our speed. We talked more about the pro-active lessons we had learnt over the previous week and looked to be more bullish in our execution. Things went much better, leading from stroke one and coming over the line with an overall ranking of 7th at the Regatta. We placed above crews selected and qualified for the Olympics and were the fastest "No. 2" boat from any nation.
As usual, we were back training on Monday morning.
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