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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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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.

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Richard Chambers has written another installment from Beijing.

Thanks to the Guardian.co.uk for hosting his blog.  Richard's blog link.

I have just looked at the Olympics countdown clock on my computer and it is no longer counting the days. I've had the clock on my screen for the last 200 days and to see it so static and still is making me sweat. The last time I wrote, just before leaving the UK, was little over a week ago but it seems like an age. Since then we have travelled to China on business class (well somebody has to do it!) and begun the process of acclimatisation and tapering.

Upon arriving in China we were warmly greeted by friendly faces and humid weather. The Chinese are amazing, they will do anything for us and are willing to help in any way possible. It's been great so far. We've even had evening drinks with the British ambassador - although when I say drinks I mean apple juice and plenty of water - and we're ready for our first race tomorrow.

The British rowers are not staying in the Olympic village for the first week of competition. Our well-organised management staff have got us accommodation next to the Shunyi rowing course , which will be a significant competitive edge. But we have visited the Olympic village, which was something else. There is more security than Fort Knox but once you are inside it is phenomenal.
To be honest I didn't know what to expect, but the Chinese have really spared no expense. There are games rooms, TV rooms, gyms, swimming pools and so much more. But what I really want to talk about is the food hall. Wow. It sits 6,000 and has so much food there that not even our heavyweight men could polish it all up. With food choices from Asian to Mediterranean I didn't know where to start, so I had a bit of everything. Stuff being a lightweight for an hour!

The Shyuni rowing course is very much like Dorney only a little bigger, and training on the course has been going well. But after being out here for a week now we are itching to get racing: we have done all that we can in our crew to put ourselves in the best possible condition - now it's up to us to perform.

Our draw came out on Thursday and we are going up against some tough opposition but who said it would be a walkover? All of our races from the heat to the final will be gut-busters. To be honest the mood in the four is sometimes tense but that works for us, it means we know that something big is coming up and feeling nerves is a good sign. All the years of training will come into play in the next week or so. We want to make the most of it and I'm sure we will. We are ready to race.

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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 

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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! 

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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 

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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!

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