News

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Jochen Kuehner in the German LM4- finds an untimely end to his regatta.

It isn't possible to race today because of illness. Jost, Bastian and me are ill. There was small hope yesterday when they cancelled races but now it's sure. My feeling is OK but my blood shows something diffrent and it's same for others.
 
No one wants to take the risk - and now I think it's right.
 
I hope you understand that I can't write something serious to your blog at the moment. I think I'll need a few days, but then I'll write something again.
 
I hope you understand - Greetings from Beijing
 
Jochen

Bookmark to:

The games are opened - waiting for our Heat 

It was my first opening ceremony and it was a great experience. Germany walked in as Number 199 of 204 Nations. This was the reason, why it was possible to take part at this event.

First we had to wait almost 2 hours in the National Indoor Stadium, but it was possible to sit down and we got drinks and food. It was an unbeliveable feeling to walk into this huge stadium and see all this people. The highlight to me was the moment when they ignited the olympic flame. The way they did it was great too. 

The games are opend and our races will start with the heat today. We'll row agaist Poland, France and Ireland . 3rd place will be enough to go directly to the Semi-Final. We'll see what happens today. Our goal is to go directly to the Semi on Thursday. 

Jochen

Bookmark to:

Up not so early to watch the rowing heats onn Day 2 of the Olympic Regatta in Beijing.

BBC Webstream link

The Draw and Results

Light tail wind and less hot than yesterday but 80% humidity.

Womens Lightweight 2x. Progression: First and Second to Semi Final and rest to Repecharge.  Heat 1 a nice confident win for the Netherlands by a length with Australia second in a dog fight over USA by 0.1 seconds.  Jen Goldsack in the USA  crew used to row for GB.  Heat 2 Canada lead for first 1500 and Germany do a great sprint through to win, Canada second and GB (Hester Goodsell and Helen Casey) third and so through to the repecharge.  Heat 3  Chinese lead out of the blocks but Denmark chase hard to come in second.

Mens Lightweight 2x.  Progression: First and Second to Semi Final and rest to Repecharge. Heat 1 Great Britain leading out ahead of Greece.  Fast race 6.13 (World record 6.10). Heat 2 Australia the early leaders but Italy take two lengths through the middle part of the race and in the sprint for the line the Australians miss out to China, second.  6.16.  Heat 3 includes the Danes, Rasmussen and Hansen, who I fancy to win this event.  Canada lead out but Denmark have a lethal push to take them by half a length at 1500.  Fantastic rhythm.  6.14.  Heat 4.  New Zealand lead off the start and all the way to win by 2 lengths.

Mens Lightweight 4-.  Progression: First three crews to Semi Final and rest to Repecharge.  Heat 1. What a line-up Australia, GB, Netherlands, China, Egypt.  Richard Chambers in the bow seat.  Chinese lead out rating high.  Great Britain chase them to a length down but by 1500 Chinese lead is just under a length. Australians push back to overlap on the British in last 200.  Chinese win by half a length from GB and Australia third.  5.51 Heat 2.  Denmark show their quality by quietly taking the lead and inching out to clear water over Canada and Italy. Denmark win by 3/4 length over Canada with Italy third. 5.50.  Heat 3.  Jochen Kuehner in 3 seat of the German boat.  France lead off the start but by 500m the German crew have pushed to a quarter length lead.   Nearly a length at 1500 and a time faster than China in heat 1.   Germany win, Poland slip past France to second place with the Irish fourth.  5.50

Womens 4x.  Progression: First to final and rest to Repecharge.  Heat 1. Chinese dominate the race (crowds going wild!)  Three lengths of clear water over Ukraine. 6.11 [one second slower than the world record!].  Hard to believe this is a heat.  Heat 2.  Germany, Britain, Australia, USA.  Great Britain lead by 500 with Germany close behind.  Halfway time 2 seconds slower than China.  1500 3/4 length still 2 seconds slower than China.  Great Britain win by 2/3 length 6.13.  Seems most of the gain was in the second 500.

Mens 4x.  Progression: First three crews to Semi Final and rest to Repecharge. Heat 1 Russians lead out but by half way the Italians take over the lead.  Pushing for the line a little early and Australia sneaks through by a foot to win.  5.36 Heat 2 Poland and France the early leaders.  Poles have over a length by half way.  Poland win by 1 length.  France and Belarus second and third. 5.38 Heat 3 At half way Germany have a slight lead over Ukraine second and USA third.  Ukraine take the lead by 1500 about 2 seconds slower than the Poles in the previous heat. Ukraine win, Germany second and USA third. 5.40

Womens 8.  Progression: First to final and rest to Repecharge.

Bookmark to:

The best new thing about the Rowing Regatta at the Beijing Olympics will be the improved online content and individualview points enabled by the social media tools now being used by athletes and journalists.

Rowperfect will be live blogging the regatta daily.

And we want to bring you an easy summary of the other places where rowers are writing about what's going on for their Olympic Regatta.  Please let us know if you find more we haven't listed.

Blogger Athletes from Beijing

Frances Houghton GB W4x on the BBC

Tom James GB M4- on his own site

Drew Ginn Australia M2- on his own site

Duncan Free Australia M2- on his own site 

Jochen Kuehner Germany LM4- on Rowperfect

Richard Chambers GB LM4- on the Guardian

Adam Kreek Canada M8+ on CBC 

Jason Read USA M8+ on WSJ's China Journal 

Row2k has three bloggers: Heather Mandoli from Canada W8+

Mahe Drysdale New Zealand M1x on New Zealand Olympic Committee site.  Mainly a photo blog 

Other online Rowing information sources about the Beijing Regatta 

A company, Lenovo, has given its laptops to a range of athletes including TJ and Ginn.  Link to all rowing bloggers on Lenovo  and a link to all the Voices of the Olympic Games bloggers on Lenovo.  Pretty interesting having so many different sports and countries and languages.

BBC Rowing summary page is good for online Rowing aggregated information from all its sources
Fan Blog - Nick heathcote , whose brother, Alastair is in the GB 8

Rowperfect Twitter stream for micro-blog updates (you can sign up to receive them as SMS messages on your mobile phone).

Now if you want to watch live sport in the UK here's some places to find it: 

 

BBC Coverage Mainly satellite / cable and Freeview 3. They also promise live webstream

And of course the BBC iPlayer will allow you to watch up to a week later.

Schedule for Olympic sports on the BBC for both weeks

The opening ceremony BBC1 12.45 Friday 9th August 

Bookmark to:

The Draw for the Olympic Regatta is now published on the BOCOG website.

Richard Chambers is racing in Heat 1 of the Lightweight Mens Coxless Fours at 16.00 on Sunday August 10th against Egypt, China, The Netherlands and Australia.  The first 3 crews will progress to Semi-Final A or B.

Jochen Kuehner is in Heat 3 of the Lightweight Mens Coxless Fours at 16.20 on Sunday August 10th against Poland, France and Ireland.  The first 3 crews will progress to Semi-Final A or B.

best of luck to them both! 

Bookmark to:

Hello everybody, my name is Jochen and I'm rowing in the Germans' LM 4-.

These are my first Olympic Games. My team and me arrived yesterday, 31st of July, about 9am at Beijing airport. It's wasn't possible to see so much at first day because view was really bad, but the organsition is much better! It took only 3 hours between first step on chinese ground and be in my room in the olympic village.

Here are everywhere people and try to help you directly. If you just look at them.

My first time at the race course was this afternoon with some easy rowing after the flight. Temperature was about 25°C but humidity was really high. I was sweating without doing something at all, so it was even more during training.

The Olympic village is really nice I think. You don't have to walk so far if you have to go to the restaurant, Transportation Mall etc. Everything is within 10-15 minutes.  The rooms are OK too. I'm living together with my twin brother, Martin, in one room.  We are in the same crew.  Three rooms are in each appartment and one floor has two apartments.  The bulidings have between 6 and 9 floors. 

Today the weather is diffrent after a hard rain yesterday evening. It was possible to see much more because there wasn't so much dust in the air. Temperature raised quite much during our training session. First it was delightful but it turned to really hot. So I'll need a few more days for acclimatisation.

Now I'll explore the Olympic Village little bit more and send you more news later.

Jochen Kühner 

Bookmark to:

The Rowperfect team has been working hard to get you some exclusive content and commentary about the forthcoming Olympic Regatta in Beijing .

We are adding new bloggers to our roster and so would like to introduce Richard Chambers - rowing for GB in the Mens Lightweight Coxless Four, Richard has been on our 'radar' for a while since his successful talk at the ARA Coaching conference last January.  More detail on Richard plus an interview he gave the World Rowing website last month. 

Richard's work will also be published on The Guardian Unlimited website - an official media partner of the British Olympic Association.

Duncan Holland will continue to give his expert commentary on the regatta, crews and how the race planning develops through the rounds of racing.  A New Zealander by adoption, Duncan has coached in Switzerland and the Netherlands on their Olympic and World Championship programmes and will offer a coaches' perspective on the regatta.

We are also hoping to get occasional athlete commentary from Jen Goldsack (USA), Jochen Kühner (GER) and Rod Chisholm (AUS).  Each representing different nations but some with connections to the UK!

Bookmark to: