Race Day - A Final

Well what can I say? I think our race was the worst that we have ever done. But saying that here is what happened.

We headed up to the start of the course and on the way up against a huge headwind we realised that it would be a massive tailwind for us on the course. We had just had two races against this huge headwind and were very used to it but hadn’t done anything in a tailwind like we were to expect. Come to think of it I don’t think I have ever rowed in a tailwind like this! I asked Alex and she had never either.

We had a really good warm up, it felt good, we had good run on the boat and we were ready. We were in lane one and it was good at the start as it was almost a direct tailwind so we didn’t have to keep the boat in line too much.

We had a pretty good start, going out fairly slowly (or at least we thought) at a stroke rate of 38. Now for those of you who are not rowers, for us 38 is really, really high. I don’t think that we have ever gone that fast! Our first 250 wasn’t too bad and leading into the second 250 we did a leg drive. Overall we had the fastest 500m that we have ever had by more than a few seconds! However just about 100m past the 500, it was getting a bit messy (this was due to the massive tailwind) and Pete in 3 seat crabbed. For those of you who don’t understand this is when the oar gets caught on a wave and pulled under. It was so big that it wrenched the oar right out of his hands, threw him backwards almost into my lap and stopped the boat completely! It took us about 20 seconds to actually get the boat back into the proper lane (it had thrown us into lane 2) and back up and rowing.

We were now in the last 250m and just wanted to finish on a good note and actually look like we knew what we were doing. After we stopped I was worried that Pete’s neck had been hurt during the crab, but he was okay. If I am honest I have to say that I was mad. I was so angry I couldn’t be upset. I know that Pete and Alex had a few tears while we headed to the cool down lake, but I couldn’t (this is unusual for me).

We had our cool down and all I could think of was looking good past the grandstand as there were a number of Aussie’s yelling congratulations at us. I couldn’t accept congratulations at that point…why…we had rowed badly!

We pulled into the pontoon and our coach Pedro was there. Not a lot was said at that point, we just got the boat out, racked the boat and then had a meeting. Pedro put everything into perspective. He said he was proud of us and what we had done. We had made the A final, when a lot of people wouldn’t have expected us to make it. We had done the best that we could. Things happen during races and we can’t change that fact. We had the fastest first 500m we had ever had, even if it was messy. Everyone else was messy and dealing with the same conditions. We had to keep in mind that we were now 6th fastest in the World!

In the end it was Great Britain (in a new world record), Italy, Germany, Canada, Ukraine and Australia.

So it is now a few hours after the race, we got back to the hotel. I went over to the shopping centre, bought some wine, did some retail therapy in the form of shoes and a top and we are getting ready to go out and have non hotel food! Then meeting with the Canadians and Irish for a night of drinks! Hopefully I will be able to write a blog tomorrow and tell you about our night.

Hey we are ranked 6th in the WORLD!!!