Racing round-up

All of the Eight plus Christian, our coach.

So it's a couple of weeks since we have raced, lots has happened since then and soon I will need to hit the gym more often.  I've got a few things happening over the coming days including a conference with Best Western and Atos tomorrow and then heading on up home to see my family.


To the racing; the Eight is the biggest and fastest event in rowing, and an event that is becoming ever closer – meaning the margins between winning and losing, qualifying or not qualifying are closer than ever.  We had a consistent Championships with wins in the Heat and the Semi-final; sadly in the final we couldn’t quite make it to the front of the pack and came away with a silver medal.  The race itself was differcult due to choppy conditions in the second half, it meant making no mistakes and dealing with it as best we could.  It wasn't our greatest of rows, but we can't come away saying "if it wasn't for this or that we would have..." as second place is where we have been positioning all year.  A silver medal feels good, but our team is so successful and our ambitions are so high, that anything less than the win is a disappointment.  The winners of the event were the German Eight, they are a formidable force (world champions ’09, ’10 and ’11) but they’re not unbeatable – they just seem to be at the moment.  Placing in the top 7 at this World Champs automatically qualifies the boat for the Olympics – this is important as next year there is only one last qualification slot available.  It means the boat, but not the individuals, will be guaranteed a place on the start line in 2012.  For the next 11 months my sole aim is to gain a place on the Olympic Team.  If I do that, by trying my hardest and being the best I can be, I will be putting in the work to go for Olympic Gold.


If you missed the racing you can watch the semi-final here by scrolling through the clips at the bottom, the mens 8+ semi's are at the far right (we are semi-final 1).


You can watch the final on the BBC here  and you can watch Greg's video diary here (Greg sat 5 seats ahead of me).

Two Days to Go.

Lake Bled 

So we've been in Bled for a few days now, being in civilisation is a welcome change.  After several weeks either high up in the Alps or in the outback of Portugal, it's nice to be around new people.  We've been lucky to train in some really picturesque locations and Bled doesn't disappoint as a final destination.  In two days time the World Rowing Championships will start and it's time to execute all that we have been doing in training.

While we are pretty serious on the water, we've generally had a good laugh when on the land.  There are several dozen running jokes, which when you try to explain you never really capture the same moment, sometimes they make their way onto Twitter, many do not.  Towards the end of the camp in Portugal the hotel dog gave birth, ironically it gave birth under the balcony of the resident Keith Lard of the team, leading to several "come to daddy" jokes for the next 24 hours.  There was also a twittergate incident where it was joked that one of the crews fell in, it didn't go down well so we had to delete the tweets.  After our journey out to Bled I posted a video of us "training" in the airport - it's had a great responce and has been featured all over the t'internet.  These are just a few of the laughs we have, but now it's time to get down to racing.

Last night we had a reception hosted by the British Ambassador to Slovenia, it was a mainly informal affair for the team to meet Embassy staff and dignitaries from Slovenia (including the Mayor of Bled, the Slovenian Olympic Committee chairman, the Slovenian Minister for Sport, some famous gymnast and the leader of the Organising Committee for the World Champs).  I'm told that the UK Minister for Sport will be joining us next week, along with the British Olympic Association chairman - Lord Moynihan [I'll be keeping my wallet close when he's about].

Ambassador Reception 

The Telegraph

The video I posted yesterday morning also made it onto The Telegraph website front page.  Here is a link to the article they wrote - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/rowing/8720323/GB-rowing-team-practice-moves-at-airport.html

The Sun

My video has made it to the front page of The Sun website; here's the article -

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3771593/Row-breaks-out-at-Munich-Airport.html

If you go to http://www.thesun.co.uk/ we are the link below the gypsy feud story - Living the Dream.