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Drew Ginn writing on his blog has some good interviews from Australian media and a quick wrap-up post on the final race.

Very Happy Boys

Well it's 48 hours later and we have been enjoying the moment. Duncan and I in a cab going back to the village. Have to say it was tough but as they say anything worth doing is not easy. Who ever they are again they are truly wise. In next few days I will share many of the emotions we have been through, but for now we are two very happy men.

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful support and encourgement. It has meant a great deal to me.

Drew also wrote another post reflecting deeply on the people who surround him and his emotional connections with them both positive and negative.

It's a long one and you can read it Connection: Finding, Testing and Realising together.

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Tom won his first Olympic medal in the GB 4-.  He writes his own blog, Tom James.  He remembers his nerves about the final and writes about the race plan.

Gold… just

It's been a while since I've left a post on my blog. I found trying to write during the week leading up to our final quite hard and didn't particularly want to give too much away either. After our semi on the Wednesday we found ourselves in a very good position to feel that we could win and since that day I had been feeling pretty emotional and nervous about the final. It's a very daunting and horrible time before an Olympic final, it doesn't make me want to do it again.

…anyway, come the final last Saturday, somehow, god only knows how, we actually won and in a way which I still can't believe. It's not even close to being a reality. I just see a nicely coloured piece of metal, with a red silk ribbon, lying on the desk by my bed which says Olympic Champion and for some reason I still can't make the connection that it's referring to me.

The Race: (more…)

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Geroid quietly finishes his Olympic Regatta and leaves the world stage

Time to exit stage left

At dawn on Wednesday, I quietly exited the Olympic Village, bound for life on “the other side”. I felt like a Big Brother contestant leaving the house, except Davina McCall and the cheering fans were not there. On the upside, at least I was not being booed!!

The ‘Olympic Machine’ was still working away flawlessly, but it’s components are being whittled away day-by-day as more and more athletes finish their competitions.
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Fran is writing on the BBC Blogs page and summarises how she feels as time passes about the Silver Medal she won with the W4x. 

^{Gradually putting silver in perspective}

^{The dust has been settling over the past few days and although I don't think our disappointment at not winning the gold will ever go away, I am beginning to put things into more perspective day by day.}

^{We actually had a great race and I honestly don't know what we could have done to go faster.}

^{If I had my day again I wouldn't change what we did; physically and tactically we put together the best race we ever have; we went as fast as we possibly could on the day. And as an athlete this is the most I have ever asked of myself.}
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Geroid Towey writes about disappointment in the Olympic Regatta

Final proves a bridge too far

After our repechage, we were upbeat and felt like we were on the cusp of making the semi-final one of our best races at the Games. We needed to, because the group draw pitted us against the top teams in the world with only three teams to emerge from the battle as finalists.

We drew current world champions (Great Britain), current Olympic champions (Denmark), current world silver medalists (France) and current world bronze medalists (Italy) along with the United States.

We were by no means fazed by the task in hand and quite often during the year had found ourselves in the mix with these crews at various World Cup regattas. And here at the Games all teams posted similar times in the heats.
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Writing on the Row2k website, Heather talks about the wind-down after the party

Life of an Olympian after competition

Phew, so I know I had a blog entry a few days back that talked about how "boring" life of a competing Olympian could be…. well I take that back. What I would do for ten minutes of down time! Life here, once you are finished competition, is absolutely exhausting but incredibly fun!

I think I have slept a total of about eight hours since our race on Sunday. As someone who has rarely had much of a social life after about 10pm for the past four years, 3am nights is not characteristic of me at all! (I am known to my teammates as "MOMdoli" due to my often motherly behaviour.)

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Jason is writing on the WSJ China Blog

Saturday was a big day at the Olympics.

The weather was gorgeous. The pollution meter was almost in the single digits! Blue skies all around. We watched Michael Phelps’ unbelievable butterfly gold medal. This wasn’t the only razor-thin victory on the ninth day of the Games. The women’s double scull from New Zealand, comprised of the lovely Evers-Swindell twin sisters, shared the same margin of victory as Phelps’ win: .01. There are very few sports that dabble in the microscopic domain of thousandths of seconds. Some winter Olympic sports do.

Following a great practice in the pair this morning, I spent the better part of the day cheering and pedaling my fanny off while following the races down. Some races weren’t quite as tight as the women’s double, but all were exciting to watch as the world’s best rowers chased the dream of winning a medal. U.S. single sculler Michelle Guerrette won silver today in one of the most exciting rowing races I’ve ever witnessed. This is the first medal for the rowing team this year. My voice is still hoarse from yelling.
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Frances is in the Great Britain W4x and is writing on the BBC Sport website

Women's quad enter final countdown

It's so hard to describe how it feels as we make the final preparations for Sunday's final.

We have spent the week working on all the aspects of rowing and our racing that we think could possibly give us more boat speed.

We were pleased with our heat, and it was a good win for us, but we know that the final will be on an entirely different level.
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Richard is blogging on the Guardian website and writes about the race they had in the heat on Sunday.

1 Down – 2 to Go

With the first race finished we are feeling slightly relieved.  Most people will know that we have had a difficult world cup season, only getting a silver at the first world cup.  For yesterdays race we put ourselves under a lot of pressure to perform well and that is what we did.  On paper it looked as though we had the more difficult of the three heats with us coming up against China who are favourites to win.

It was a great race and even though we came away in second we are pleased with our result.  It has helped our confidence but we know that we have a lot more to come.  Robin Williams, our coach reminds us ‘we are in the business of winning’.  We will not settle for that second place.  Over the next couple of days we will look to step on and improve our rowing and our overall performance

It was a big moment for me yesterday, putting on the Olympic vest with the 5 rings on it was special.  Not many people get to this point in the sporting careers.  This is the highest point any rower can go to in their careers and I'm glad to be here in China, but I'm not settling for just taking part.  We are out here to win and nothing else will be good enough for our crew.2 Golds and 1 bronze for team GB so far.  The rowers are pulling out some quality performances all round.  Hopefully we can keep up this winning trend and that the lightweight four can be a part of that.

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Nathan Twaddle is in the New Zealand M2- and writes a fantastic summary of what it takes to prepare for a big race.

Race day insights

The night before
I try to not think about it too much. Getting to sleep is quite a tough thing. Sometimes I'll watch past races where we've done well or watch races of events that I think encapsulate what a good rowing race should be and possibly think about that when you go to sleep.

Surprisingly, I generally get to sleep reasonably well the night before a race, so it's a bit of a balancing act between relaxation and using that time to think about strategies you might want to employ the next day.
Because from the next morning, it really does just become an automatic routine, and there's not too much room to start thinking about what ifs, from that point.
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