Pulling out of Hamburg

Last night GB Rowing announced that all GB crews would be pulling out of the Hamburg World Cup (meant to be in 10 days time).  There has been a significant outbreak of Ecoli in Germany, originating in the Hamburg region.  With one of the symptoms of ecoli being death, it's a serious thing to consider.  If anyone caught anything like ecoli, it could very easily end up being the end of their Olympiad.

Plans have been changed and we will look to make just as good a use of our time.  I don't know to exact plan yet, but I am assuming Henley Royal will be the next chance to see the men's eight race.  It's disappointing not to be racing at this event, but there will plenty of other opportunities ahead.

Without doubt we have one of the best support structures in the sport, and all athletes in the team never have to worry about things like this as the right decision is often made.

Hard week plus O2 and London Youth Games

 

I've had a pretty tiring week post Munich World Cup.  We got straight back into training but certainly had to tough it out towards the end of the week.  As I've mentioned before, your body can react in funny ways after hard races, particularly when racing over a few days.  I was in a bit of a bad way, but kept recovering enough to make it to training the next day.  There is a strong sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when you're tired and ill but still able to plough on.  The light on the horizon was the day off on Sunday, without that I'm sure I would have crumbled quicker than a digestive.  Along with training I had two events to attend this week.

On Thursday evening I went straight from training to an O2 employee event at Battersea Park.  I've recently taken up an offer from O2 for work experience in their legal team, admin stuff is still going through but I hope to start in the next week or two (more about all this in a later post).  The event was for management from all branches of the O2 family, looking towards the next 12 months and how O2 wants to develop in that time.  I have found that anyone to do with O2 is unbelievably positive about the company, and from what I can see there is good reason - lots of positive stuff, particularly for customers, will be rolling out over the next few months.  I met and spoke to quite a few people, I also joined in the 1 minute ergo challenge that was going on - hopefully I still had the top score at the end of the night (if I didn't then I will look like a right mug).  It was particularly good to chat to Ronan Dunne, the CEO at O2, a nice guy with a great knowledge of sport.

On Saturday I had my second event of the week, which was probably my second event of the year come to think about it.  After training, I shot across London to the Royal Docks by London City Airport.  The Thames Water London Youth Games Regatta (catchy title) is a competition held each year between all the London boroughs as part of the wider Balfour Beatty London Youth Games; points are won for the borough in each event, with an overall borough champion named at the end of the games.  I was there with Andy Triggs-Hodge, who is sponsored by Thames Water.  While there I met up with Amanda from Atos Origin (who provide a bursary to aid my training to 2012), it was great to chat to her again and will hopefully see her at Henley Regatta this year.  Andy and I gave out the medals to the winning crews.  Each person celebrates a victory in their own way, some were very smiley and excited to receive the medal; others were more stoic.  Every village has it's idiot and every Olympic champion has a super fan.  Well Andrew Triggs-Hodge met her in East London on Sat 4th June 2011.  I don't know her name, but she won the girl's single scull event.  As her win was announced she jumped from the floor (from a cross-legged position, and didn't use her hands!), ran [arms flapping] to the steps of the stage.  As she climbed up the steps she squealed to Andy - "Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, I follow you on Twitter" (with various excitable noises).  Andy laughs nervously and the girl nearly collapses with joy.  Nearly forgetting her medal, she leaves quicker than she got up there.  All in all a good day and a great story for the lads down at Caversham.

Surprisingly, I know a lot of people missed out on Olympic rowing tickets.  You can register on http://www.eventeam2012.fr/ before midnight in France (11pm BST)  TONIGHT and you will have an exclusive 48 hours from June 13 to buy tickets on a first-come, first-served basis.  After the two-day window, the remaining Olympic tickets will be on general sale.  This is a genuine website and there is a further article on this on the Telegraph website today.

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.

Munich Day 2 - Repercharge

Today we raced at 15:06 BST in our repercharge; we won the race, with the Netherlands a close second followed by France and China.  We race at 12:58 BST and you can watch live streaming of the race online at http://www.worldrowing.com/live-results or on the Red button on the BBC.

At the moment Man U and Barcelona are 1-1 at Wembley, its good for the Man U fans - only a short tube ride to get home from the game.

Tomorrow I will paddle early in the morning, get the system woken up and then will prepare myself for the final.  Hope everyone is enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend!