Last Rowing Day in Italy

I must digress and talk about yesterday a bit more before I get on to today!

During the week here a number of the support staff have been heading out on long bike rides. A number of them are very experienced at riding in packs and they have also been here to Italy a number of times with other teams. Our support member Matt or Bilko as he is referred to decided that he wanted to go with them and had done so each morning. The build up during the week was to get them all prepared for the “Big” ride on Sunday morning. Bilko even went and bought new riding shorts, (not that they were the most flattering of shorts! but he liked them!) as they would be doing over 2 hours and climbing one of the bigger hills here in the district. I think he was a bit hesitant and he took a lot of joking from everyone about him doing this ride. But at 10:30 a.m. we waved them off.

At 12:30 p.m. we all went to lunch and I mentioned to Alex that the riders should be back at the hotel soon. Then while sitting down to eat we got the news that Bilko had “stacked it”, in other words he had had a crash! No one could tell us the extent of his injuries, but he had gone to hospital in an ambulance! Luckily they had a support vehicle following them and our team doctor had been in the van.

Well when he arrived back at the hotel late in the afternoon he definitely looked a bit worse for wear! He had actually come off the bike (he says at 35km/hour and hit a concrete wall and metal railing. Unfortunately he hit the railing with his face and the wall with his shoulder. Luckily he had not broken a bone at all, but did end up with a severely bruised right arm and shoulder, with 3 stitches to his chin (which they stitched up without anaesthetic! His face is bruised and slightly swollen but he is alive and that is all that matters. Oh... and he didn’t even get to see the big hill he was to climb!

Now, on to our last day rowing here in Italy.

We had one row today and that was 2 x 1000m pieces. We were only getting timed on the first 250m and the last 250m. The 500m in the middle was to be extremely easy. We were all looking forward to this because each time we had gone out we had done better than the time before and we figured that today would be no different.

Our first 250m wasn’t too bad, but certainly didn’t feel as good as it had the last few days and after the last 250m of this piece, I think we all figured that we had forgotten how to row! It felt terrible and the only thing to do was head back up to the 1000m to do the next two. Unfortunately the next two felt even worse. We had lost our really good timing and it felt like we were missing water. There certainly wasn’t much said in the boat or even after the rowing. I think all of us were in our own thoughts for the rest of the day. Funny enough we didn’t get the results until the end of the day and to say I was shocked is an understatement! The times we had done were phenomenal, faster than we had ever gone and the highest prognostic percentages we had ever obtained, even hitting 101% on the 2nd 250m. I just keep thinking, how the hell was this possible? I then found out that we had a cross wind at the start of the pieces and a tail wind at the end, but hell that could happen in a race! I will take the times, but just think how fast we could have been if we had gotten our act together! This is something that we as a crew have to think about when we next row in Poland.

After the row it was time to pack things up and load the boat trailer. Not only is the Australian trailer taking all of our boats but also the Adaptive Italian teams boats. To be honest I have never see a trailer loaded so much and then to think that they will be taking it over the mountains. We worry about taking trailers through Australia with our wide open roads. I wasn’t even sure how they were going to get this trailer up the road from the rowing club and through the round-abouts!

The rest of the team heads to Poland tomorrow on two separate flights, but because we were late inclusions on the team we have an extra day here in Italy. We will be doing a pool session in the morning, but then off to the Italian countryside and venturing a bit farther than just locally. We have the entire day to explore and I think we are all looking forward to it!

Oh and Bilko is making an amazing recovery to the point where he got his sling off his arm, yes he is battered and bruised but he even started driving again today! So at least he will be staying with us and having a look around. I think he has used one of his nine lives!