News

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

Draw for the Olympic Regatta

 BBC Webstream for Rowing Heats

Womens singles.  Progression: first 3 go to Quarter Finals.  China wins heat 1 easily.  Emma Twigg for NZ wins heat 2.  Karsten wins heat 3.  Neykova wins heat 4 (Cuba second!). Bascelli of Italy easily beats Australia into second place in heat 5.  Knapova leads easily in heat 6.

Mens singles.  Progression: first 4 go to Quarter Finals. Maeyens from Belgium leads heat 1. Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand easily leads head 2.  [Shock the Chinese sculler didn't show and was disqualified], Karonen from Sweden beats Hacker from Germany in heat 3. Synek commanding in heat 4 for Czech Republic.  Heat 5 toughest yet: USA, Australia (Peter Hardcastle), USA (Jurkowski) and Alan Campbell of GB.  Campbell sculls a mature race and wins by clear water.  Heat 6 includes Rod Ideus fron Tideway Scullers who is a lightweight U23 and qualified to row for Colombia. Tufte of Norway and Hamburger of Netherlands pushing out in front.  Tufte has fabulous rhythm.

Maeyens and Synek use Magik Oarlocks . Alan Campbell and Peter Hardcastle are Rowperfect users.

Womens Pairs. Progression: first to final everyone else to Repecharge.  Heat 1 great line-up - could have been a final.  Three crews who have won world championship golds Belarus, NZ and Canada.  Belarus to the final.  NZ second.  Heat 2 Romania come through at 1500 to look so confident.  They took 3/4 length on Germany in about 25 strokes.

Mens Pairs.  Progression: First 3 go to Semi Finals; rest to Repecharge.  Heat 1 Canada, USA (the brothers who sued Facebook and won!), France - who win with a great finishing sprint; Canada almost seem to give up and get third.  Heat 2 Australia (Free, Ginn) have such a clear lead and dominate from the front.  Heat 2 includes New Zealand (Twaddle and Bridgewater) and Chalupa stroking the Czech crew who only qualified because the Austrians withdrew.   Skelin Brothers for Croatia don't look like they are in the same competition.  New Zealand win.

Womens Double Sculls. Progression: first to Final, rest to Repecharge.  Heat 1 the Kiwi twins are leading with confidence - 6 seconds ahead of the rest on the line.  Heat 2 the Chinese world champions (just) beat the Czechs into second.  GB third.  Wonderful challenge by the Czechs - should have gone a bit later, might have had the jump on the Chinese.  Wicked sprint from the Chinese after challenge from Czechs Antosova and Varekova.

Mens Double Sculls.  Progression: First three to Semi Finals, rest to Repecharge. Heat 1 Belarus lead out from New Zealand and USA (Coached by Tim McLaren).  Great race - if the Belarussians get their pace judgment right they could be very dangerous later in the regatta.  Kiwis win in the sprint to the line.  Heat 2 Estonia (Juri Janssen and Tonu Endrekson) lead out challenged later by Great Britain (Wells and Rowbotham) who win with Croatia second as Estonians fade.  Heat 3 Chinese don't show AGAIN.  No reason given, just DNS (did not start).  Slovenia, France, Australia the crews to watch.  Aussies win but it seems strange that the Slovenians backed off.

The British double have used Rowperfect this year for the first time and Estonians are also Rowperfect users (from WAY back) as are Dave Crawshaw from Australia, he's the hunk on the front page of the Rowperfect brochure - rowing by the ocean.

Mens Fours. Progression: first three to Semi Finals, rest to Repecharge.  Heat 1 Great Britain in the middle lane with the USA and Italians also in the hunt.  GB holding the Italians off nicely through the second half of the race.  Heat 2 the Dutch are strong.  Slovenians row really nicely.  Dutch hold off the Kiwi late challenge.  Same time as previous heat.  Nothing to learn from the times except it'll be a great semi final and final.  Heat 3 Ireland, Australia - rowing beautifully.  Poise at the finish keeping the body leaning back while the handle continues to move around and lead onto the recovery.  Ireland beat them in the sprint for the line.  Jonno Devlin formerly of GB switching to row for them probably in order to get this trip to race in the Olympics.

Irish use Magik Gates.  

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:

Richard Chambers is writing for the Guardian.co.uk Newspaper website.

Here is his latest installment.  Richard Chambers Blog on The Guardian

 He makes the interesting observation about the amount of time training compared to racing…..

"In total the Team GB Lightweight Four will complete approximately 18 minutes of racing. For me that’s about 162 days training for each minute of racing!"

WHat I also like is his view that the regatta presents a "level playing field".  It is true that some crews have already raced their opposition during this season's World Cup regattas but as Eric Craies was wont to say "You're only as good as your last race!"  Meaning you write your name on the water - stop talking and prove your speed by going fast.

" All our results in this crew are in the past, this year’s world cup season and last years world championship result means nothing. We start on a level playing field. It’s all to play for."

Richard Chambers 

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:

Duncan Holland writes;

Maggie Thatcher famously claimed that ‘There is no such thing as society ’.  I don’t wish to be handbagged by the shade of the Iron Lady but my experiences this week on, and around, the Cam lead me to a different conclusion.  This week I have been privileged to live in a different world to the one she inhabited.

Those who have read some of my recent posts will know I am a fan of the Bumps.  Last night was the last night of the bumps this year and I had a great time as I had all week.  What I experienced was a society functioning.  The Cambridge (UK) rowing community numbers around 1000 people excluding students.  This week we have had around 850 of them on the river racing, with many filling multiple roles as athletes, coxes, coaches, organisers, marshals, and so on with most of the rest also working to make it a success.   This is standard stuff for rowers remarkable though it is.  

Where the rowing society really shows though is in the reaction to others results.  Other peoples’ triumphs are greeted with genuine pleasure.  As a winner rowed home down the course wearing willow , all the other crews applauded and cheered, there was shared pleasure in seeing others triumph.  

We were fortunate enough to bump up all four nights and thus qualify for Blades .  This rounded out one of the best rowing months of my life.  I have had great fun, made and deepened friendships, learnt things and taught things, drunk a sufficiency of good beer, and been reminded that in the rowing part of the world a lot of things are done well, and done happily, for the pleasure and gain of others.

Rowing society exists and works.  Long may it be so!

Duncan

Bookmark to:

Duncan Holland writes;

I promised yesterday to tell you how we got on today in the Cambridge Town Bumps . The answer is; very well.  We managed to get our third bump of the week and stand on the edge of a clean sweep and the right to Blades.

It was an instructive afternoon for me.  Again I found myself having to do what I normally tell others to do.  I have a fixed pre-race routine and it got disrupted yesterday when some guests we were expecting got lost and were late arriving.  This threatened to make me late.  It wasn’t a real threat as we had a Plan B, but I found myself exhibiting classic pre-race nerve symptoms.  I had to use some of the skills I try to teach to athletes and remind myself that there was an alternative, that we had a built in time reserve.  A good reminder that even the most experienced of us need to remember the basics, and that a plan with built in safeguards is worthwhile.

The crew performed well.  We managed to execute the plan we had made, managed to structure our race better, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  Now we have a chance to achieve what would be, for us, a significant step.  Blades would be a good effort; we have to make sure that we don’t slip up at the last hurdle.  Just as a crew that has won a semi-final at a Championship will try to focus on what to do in the final, not on the possibility of winning, we must try to live by the mantra ‘process not outcome’.  If we go out to race thinking of what might be we risk losing.  We must again think of what to do, listen to the cox’n, the coach, and think of what makes the boat fast, not what we want to achieve.

The event is local, the absolute level not great, but the skills we need tonight are the same ones the big boys will need at the Olympics.  And we are having fun, I hope they do too!

Duncan

Bookmark to:

Duncan Holland writes;

I wrote yesterday about how I was struck by the similarity between the post-race analyses of our Bumps crew and that of a high-performance outfit.  Last night I realised that there is a further analogy that is of interest, to me anyway!

The Bumps involves racing four times over the space of four days.  Each day the crew starts in a potentially new position based on yesterday’s results, theirs and their competitors.   This has some similarity to a championship regatta such as the Worlds where crews are faced by four rounds.  Where the analogy is interesting is on the mental side, the mental preparation and reaction.  

Before the first day there are hopes of triumph, and fears of the unknown.  Can we win Blades or a medal, are we competitive?  After the first race there are some data, hopes may be alive of a triumph, there may have to be some reassessment, some re-alignment of goals to make them realistic.  After days two and three the process continues, good performances bring added pressure and expectation, a poor one the need to re-assess.  If things go well for three rounds then before the final race there is a crescendo of hope and expectation.

As a case in point; our crew (Champion of the Thames M5)  came into the Bumps with high hopes and some trepidation.  On day one we went out after our best ever training session and rowed poorly to a relatively easy bump .  Afterwards we talked, realised we hadn’t executed the plan and promised each other to do better the next day.  Yesterday we rowed much better, followed the script better, and got a good Bump, well earned by our standards.

Now comes the interesting challenge; today we can sniff a winning week, Blades are a possibility.  We know we have to row as we did yesterday, we need to stay focused in the present, to stay in our own boat, to be patient.  In fact, to execute all the sports psychology clichés that are familiar to us all.  

This is where the analogy bites for me.  I have spent a long time telling people to do these things, now I have to do them myself.  I’ll let you know how we, and I, get on.

Duncan

Bookmark to:

Duncan Holland writes:

Cambridge Town Bumps have started, last night was round one.  There were the usual high profile (relatively) happenings, (Rob Roy lost the Women’s Headship to 99’s ) and there was the usual wealth of excitement.

Those of you who have read my pieces before will know that I am a fan of Bumps.  How else can you get 94 eights onto a tiny stream for meaningful competition in the space of a few hours?  And for that matter what other town has this many people rowing from such a small population?
My crew bumped up, most of the improvement we have made over the last 2 months stuck, and we caught the St. Radegund crew ahead of us.

I was fascinated listening to us afterwards; the general mood was ‘Could do better’. The thinking, the mix of pleasure at the outcome, the overlay of ‘How to do it better’ was just like a high-performance crew. And therein lies one of the joys of social sport. We know we are slow but get a great buzz out of trying to be better.  

High-performance sport is worthwhile, don’t get me wrong, but what we do is worthwhile too, and costs the taxpayer a lot less!

Duncan

Bookmark to:

I am racing and coaching for my Cambridge (UK) club, Champion of the Thames , at the moment.  It is great fun; I am making lots of new friends and enjoying myself thoroughly.  Champs is the ninth club to which I have belonged over many years of rowing in quite few different countries.  

Champs is, at least for me, a new experience.  This year in the Town Bumps we have 17 eights starting, nine men and 8 women.  All from a base, 10 years ago, of only two eights racing in this event.  For the club to have grown so spectacularly it must be doing a lot of things right.  This is even more emphatically so when one considers that we don’t have a club house.  The club is loosely based in some borrowed space in a College boathouse (Clare College ), and has equipment stored in two others, and leases boats from at least two more.  

The clubs I grew up in were hierarchical, there was a clear pecking order, and the club officials told you which crew you were going to race in. A top down, centrally run, state if you like.  Training times were structured and, essentially, the whole club trained at the same time. If the club went to a regatta, the whole club went.  Those who made the club run were visible because we were all at the boatshed at the same times each week.

Champs is run to a different social model. Our model is much more crew based and basically consists of a loose federation of crews, each of which has coalesced around a leader, an organiser.  So the crew I am in is known much more as Champs Levien (David Levien is our leader) than Champs 5 which indicates our position in a mostly ignored hierarchy. Our club rivals are Champs Munby to us, not Champs 6.  Each crew decides independently if it wants to race at a particular event.  We are, if you like, a federal state.  Is this perhaps a reflection of the new zeitgeist?  Of the new way we organise our lives?  It is certainly a model that would struggle without modern electronic communication.  It is also a system that makes it easy to not notice the contribution from those who do the organising, the fundraising, the boat repairs.  

This different management model works well while there are enough keen, eager and generous people to run the background organisation on which it is based.  Champion of the Thames is well blessed in this department.  Hats off to those who labour unseen and make it work!

Duncan

Bookmark to:

Is taking part the most important thing?  We grow up being told that Baron Pierre de Coubertin who founded the modern Olympics said that taking part is more important than winning.  In fact the original of this statement was a speech given by Bishop Ethelbert Talbot at a service for Olympic champions during the 1908 Olympic Games. This sermon apparently inspired de Coubertins’ Olympic Creed. The Olympic Creed reads:

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

These days we hear of teams and individuals ‘failing’ if they don’t win.

At Henley Royal Regatta yesterday I was reminded of this by two conversations.  One was with a senior member of the CUBC who questioned the club’s decision (in which he partook!) to send the young development four from the club to race at HRR in the Prince Albert Challenge Cup .  He felt the failure of the crew not to make it past second round showed they were wrongly selected.  They were eliminated by the strong favourites, Newcastle University.  Their losing time was the second fastest for the day of all the competitors in this event; they had the luck to get to race the best crew in the event early.  They raced aggressively and well, they reached a higher level than they had previously.

Was this failure?  I think not.

The second discussion was with a friend who coaches a top level crew which had an easy win against inexperienced opposition.  He shared the trip in the umpire’s launch with the parents of the opposing crew.  The parents were bursting with pride at the achievements of their sons.  They had done something no other member of their club or family had ever done before.  They failed to trouble the top crew but left happy and standing tall. 

Was this failure? I think not.

One of the great things about HRR is that it allows, even encourages, these things.  The top ends of the events often produce great racing between well matched opponents, but the unique qualifying procedure and entry requirements allow, and encourage, the quixotic and hopeful entrants and can force us to look at how we define, and relate to, winning and losing.  

Well done to the Stewards!

Duncan

Bookmark to: