News

And to round up the end of this year's Worlds here is the self-compiled medal table. Any mistakes- please let us know.  Source FISA

Medal table

Germany Gold = 4 Silver = 1 Bronze = 4

New Zealand Gold = 4 Bronze = 1

Great Britain Gold = 3 Silver = 5

USA Gold = 3 Silver = 3 Bronze = 1

Ukraine Gold = 3 Silver = 1

Poland Gold = 2 Silver = 1

Italy Gold = 2  Silver = 2 Bronze = 1

Netherlands Gold = 1 Bronze = 3

Belarus Gold = 1 Bronze = 1

Switzerland Gold = 1

Hong Kong Gold = 1

Greece   Gold = 1 Silver = 1 Bronze = 1

France Silver = 3

Australia Silver = 2 Bronze = 1

Romania Silver = 2

Denmark Silver = 1 Bronze = 3

Czech Republic  Silver = 1 Bronze = 2

Canada Silver = 1 Bronze = 1

Brazil Silver = 1

Estonia Bronze = 1

Slovakia Bronze = 1

Bulgaria Bronze = 1

Serbia Bronze = 1

[You're not going to believe how long this took to compile!] Enjoy.

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Some surprising results on the last day of the worlds.  Old names fail to make the grade and new ones come storming through.  Thanks to the Rowing Voice Mystic Worlds comptition it's clear that those who do well in the early rounds don't always dominate the finals!

All the results in an easy-to read format (so much better than FISA's site)

Breaking their 3-year gold medal drought, Germany wins the LM4- and we are delighted. They were robbed in Beijing by illness and on re-forming now clearly have a world-beating combination.

A classic quote from Coach Mike Spraklen about Canada's silver medal in the eight.  "It was nice to get a silver medal in the eight,"

New Zealand topped the medals table with four golds and a bronze showing they are ramping up to hosting next year's Worlds at Lake Karapiro.

USA winning the W8+ for the 4th year in a row is fantastic especially as two of them already won gold in W2- the day before.  The M2+ (Gold) and silvers to W4x and LM8+.

Great Britain finished off a satisfactory worlds with a photo finish for LW2x in which their new combination lost out to the host nation, Poland. The BBC is already leading speculation about who will return to the GB team for the rest of the cycle.  It seems Thompson, Grobler and Williams will have their work cuto out to translate  silver medals into golds. And A nice article about the GBR LW4x silver medal.

Row2k sums up the whole week with a lovely time-lapse photography video of the boat park called "Worlds Saturday in 3 minutes ". 

rupjghsi5k

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Strangely, I watched all the racing live and then failed to write a post.

Sorry folks.

Have a read of Row2k for a US-centric view of the outcomes and the GB Rowing press page - the scrolling pictures are nice.

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Rowing Voice does daily updates of the racing at Poznan for £3 - plus snippets on the Twitter feed @rowingvoice  which is worth reading for weather reports, practice session reports and some funnies. We commend them to you. Or subscribe for a year .

See audio podcast interviews wtih GBR M1x Campbell,  GBR W2- Whitlam, GBR M2- Hodge and Reed, GBR Team Manager Tanner, GBR M1x Campbell and GBR M4- Langridge

Race of the day was LM4- which ended with a photo finish between Denmark and Germany .  Roll on a fine final for that medal!  And the M4x will be a fine battle between Poland and Germany as well.

Australia have eight crews into finals and yesterday qualified M4x and LW2x both in third for the A finals and there's a good photo gallery too.

USA has a lacklustre day with the  qualifying LW1x and leaving LM4-, LW2x and M4x disappointed.  Row2k race summary and photo galleries.

New Zealand adds LM2x and LM1x to their eight-crews in the final roster. Sounds like Duncan Grant will need to go a lot faster in the final.

Canada also has 8 crews in the final Yesterday LW2x and LM2xboth qualified.

Great Britain race summary and a claim of 11 crews into A finals  including WL2x and ML2x with only LM1x missing out.

If you have time, do read the Row2k blogs from the worlds there are some nice insights.

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A double update (sorry for missing yesterday).  finally a tail wind to speed up the times clocked! 

Great Britain - rather unlikely ML4- in the C final (what went wrong there?) anyway they win it by clear water ahead of NZ and Australia.  FromWednesday the M4x has withdrawn due to illness (disappointment as Rob Roy's Charles Cousins was in that crew).

USA happy as three crews get into the A finals including W2- and LM4x including Dan Scholz and Jonathan Winter who has some photos online .

Australia - photo gallery from Thursday's racing including W2- qualifying and some hard scrubbing boatwork by coaches! Their W2- make the A final coming second behind USA crew and the W2x also qualify second behind Great Britain. Great white hopes are M4 - who win their semi final by 3 seconds in a similar time to GBR who win the other semi.  Saturday's final will be a great race.  From Wednesday their M4x qualify to the semis by winning the repecharge easily. From a twitter exchange with @ausrowing they confirm that their heat performance was significantly below what they expected.

there's a nice interview with the AUS W4- who are at their first World Championships.

New Zealand.  Nice back-story on Mahe Drysdale including classic quote "The lure of Olympic gold in London 2012 is the pot at the end of his four-year rainbow."and this one  "Quite often in the single there will be one other guy who will come out and perform in the final and you don't know which one it's going to be."

Summary news articles about NZ crews. Six NZ crews confirmed for the finals,  adaptive rower Robin Tinga, women's pair of Emma-Jane Feathery and Rebecca Scown, the men's pair of Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, the men's double of Matthew Trott and Nathan Cohen, and women's single sculler Emma Twigg.  A good showing for a small nation.

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We've raced at a few local regattas in the J16 quad, winning by several on each occasion. We have another race on Thursday at Dartmouth Regatta, if we win here then we become WEARA champions! Also I am going to be racing in the single at Glocester regatta on the following saturday. I will speak to our coach tomorrow at training and let you know of any races we plan to enter in the Autumn.

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Just got a queesiton in from Jeff Ginns

Hi Rebecca and Grant,
I purchased a pair of Dreher sculls from you about 2 years ago. I'm keen on getting them painted with club colours, but I've seen some pretty ordinary efforts with Drehers before (i.e. when people have a go themselves). Do you have a recommended company who might do this?

Jeff

Well that is a question we've never been asked before….. Anyone got a suggestion?

We publish how to paint sculls ….. maybe there's a business waiting for an entrepreneur to paint club oars.

 UPDATE

Steven Robinson at Tideway Scullers School paints sculls for £20 a pair, his telephone number is 07701064924.

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And onto another day… repecharges now and a host of adaptive events.

Belatedly I lean that the FISA site has audio with the Live Race Tracker service.  Sigh!

Great track-side comments from @rowingvoice while watching the afternoon practice session. LOLat these three tweets

The Hacker parade (aka the GER M4x, led by their famous former wchamp) comes into the media area to do i'views with their pressofficer.

DEN LM4- unorthodoxly doing their pace work from finish to start in the warm-up lane, less likely to be timed! Cleverstickses.

Sorry, but no
idea why the GER M4x goes so fast. Just saw them sprint-practice past,
thumping their weight into the bows like heffalumps.

Results today include a race for lanes [when there are fewer than six entries] for W4- which was won by Netherlands 

the British LM1x Adam Freeman-Pask was wopped into second place by newcomer from Iran, Mohsen SHADI NAGHADEH. 

M2x repecharge Swiss crew of Andre Vonarburg and Florian Stoffer won their race (Vonarburg was in the Great8)

New Zealands U23 M4 - got through their repecharge - a tough call.  I remember 2001 when the GB team did a similar doubling up and their crew raced 4+ coxed which is less competitive than coxless as it's not an Olympic class event.  That crew got a bronze medal.  Where are they now?

Photos

 A nice gallery of australians ….. there must be a collective noun for that… suggestions?

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Sounds like the wind was the 'big news' for day 2 of the Worlds - a strong headwind had a major impact on times for all the races.

 Nice insight from Row2K correspondent

The headwind also played into racing strategy, as it seemed like many of the more experienced crews, especially in the lightweight events, were putting a little more emphasis on building a really big lead in the first 500m or so; that logic wasn't bad considering that it's not as easy to make up a deficit into a big wind, and we didn't see many crews take that gamble and fail to hold on. 

USA news - W4x won their heat having raced Luzern adn come second, they report "The US crew, which has three new athletes in the boat from the crew that finished 2nd in Lucerne"  If you're going fast enough to medal in a World Cup, why re-select before the Worlds?  Overall disappointment as US M8+ and M4x crews were in fast heats and failed to qualify.

GBR has a fine article about their M2- Triggs-Hodge and Reed which opines "If the British pair were comfortable in their heat, Murray and Bond were dominant in theirs" So a tough final slog.  Seems Jurgen Grobler was right to stick to coaching the M4- as they seem very fast winning their heat.  Elaine Johnstone struggling in LW1x at her first international regatta behind Rowperfect user, Spaniard Teresa Mars de Xaxars.

 Canada seems more upbeat with news that three crews progress towards finals, the mens eight posted the fastest time of the boat class.

"The Dutch put in some pushes," said Andrew Byrnes, one of only two members (the other is Malcolm Howard) of the eight from last year's gold medal Olympic boat. "They are a top-quality crew that have found a lot of speed…. Buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a tight final."

New Zealand now have 8 crews qualified for finals, the latest being LM2x Uru and Taylor - I hadn't realised they had a weed problem at the Beijing Olympics and failed to make the final.  

New bloggers - from the US adaptive team, Emma Preuschl and the Aussie LM4- Darryn Purcell

Funnies

thanks again to the Row2k correspondent for the funnies

Band of Brothers: the GER LM4- is the Kuehner twins and the Schoemann-Finck brothers. In addition, the Kuehners are Jochen and Martin, and the Schoemann-Fincks are Jost and Matthias. In the boat, they're all paired up by family, ie. the Kuehners in the stern, but you wonder if they sometimes switch stuff up when they row pairs? 

From yesterday, here's the double tandem-tandem.

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I was frustrated just watching the live updater from FISA and the results service .  Doesn't really give a good view of what 'really' happened in the races.  You can't see if soneone is just cruising ahead of the pack or really sweating to make the times published.

Anyway, several countries are plugging their team results pretty hard online.  Makes it easy to see which crews they think stand a chance of making finals.

Australia - Interviews with Performance Director Andrew Matheson who reviews the day's results "Probably one of the pleasing things with them is that there are a few things they can work on as well."  and M4- coach Tim Conrad

Great Britain - a 'confident' start according to official sources.  M2- won their heat as did Alan Campbell M1x in a storming time.  Why win with such a huge margin?  Does it show the opposition how fast they need to go to beat you?

Canada - their fancied crews include the mens pair… although it sounds like they haven't done a 2k race together yet (!)Love the headline "Canada places third in day one of World Rowing Championships" - made me think their crews were third out of ALL the countries.  LOL.

New Zealand - the official press release summary.  The Row2k view point and another report .  Overall they came first in four heats (LM1x, M2-, W2- and M1x). More analysis .

USA - the mens L8+  W2-, M2+ seem the hottest prospects in the pack for the US team.

New sites to follow @iwomensports Twitter following women in sport.  And for other countries  @infosportNZ , @usrowing and @ausrowing all prolific with information updates and links to good sites.

Quirky factoids

The opening ceremony was an 'unique' event and fascinated the Row2k blogger Oli Rosenbladt.

The 'tandem rig to end all tandems' was spotted by row2k

We saw a rig today that looks like one of those jokes you sometimes make when there's time to kill at the boathouse; one of the adaptive 4+ is rowing a double-bucket: stern pair both on starboard and bow pair on port. We'll definitely post photographic evidence of that one when we get it, for sure, and for those who are wondering, yeah, the boat was actually not moving badly.

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