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Well the Heat is over and we are heading straight to the final. We were able to execute a convincing victory over the Chinese beating them by 5.38secs with a time of 5:25.80.
This is a pretty fast time on this course even with a very small tail wind. The other heat was won by Australia in a time of 5:29.03. As you can see this is just over a 3 second difference. The interesting part is that they were pushed the entire way as they only beat Germany by 1.64secs. This gives us some valuable information. It tells us that they went flat out as they had to race the entire way to win. Remember it was only first place who goes directly to the final on Sunday.
We now have Saturday off from racing but we will still go out on the water before racing starts for a morning paddle and likely have another short row in the late afternoon to keep the body ticking over by doing a race warm up and a few 250m pieces.
Even though we had the fastest time of the day by a sizable margin, we can't take it for granted, we have the control but we also have to make it happen. The main contenders are still Australia, Germany, China and Great Britain for the final on Sunday. They now know that we are still fast and this will be their last chance to benchmark themselves against us so Sunday we will have to lay down a huge 2000m race.
This is an extremely intense yet exciting time for us. We've been waiting all winter for this and our time has arrived. Our final race before the Olympics is set for Sunday in Lucerne.
For all results check www.worldrowing.com
There is also a live race tracker there with audio commentary
Check the link for video feeds for the Sunday finals....it only cost $5 for the month.
Below are a few pictures from todays racing. Note our brand new yellow Empacher. It is a German made boat and is worth about $35000. They are letting us use it for free. They really want us to race it!
Always check the Newspaper links section along the right hand side of my blog for the newest articles. Here is the link to the one in the Toronto Star from today.
http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/433944
I just got back from the course and have seen the draw for tomorrow's racing.
Below are the crews in our race
Heat #1 Australia, Germany, Great Britain & Poland
Heat #2 Canada, France, China, Netherlands
We are pretty happy with the draw. If we had a choice, we didn't want to race Australia till the final since they were the winners from 2 weeks ago in Munich at World Cup #1, so it works into our favour. At the end of the day you have to beat everyone to win!
China can be quick out of the start but I don't expect too much of a challenge from either France or the Netherlands.
All for now....off to dinner!
Above is a picture of us training this morning
Scott Russell will be one of the anchors for the CBC Sports broadcasts during the Olympics and he just recently posted a blog all about me.
Here is the link if you want to check it out.
www.cbc.ca/olympics/blog/cbc_personalities/scott_russell/brian_price_is_canadas_little_2.html
We arrived in Lucerne after a short 3 hour bus ride through some glorious scenery in Northern Italy and Switzerland. Let me tell you, it's nothing like Canada. The only thing similar are the Rocky Mountains, but even then the landscape is totally different. Anyway.......
The first thing we noticed upon our arrival was the heat here, and it has gotten even hotter. It's certainly not unbearable, but its around 30deg. That being said, the course is in perfect condition as per usual with Lucerne and just a slight tail wind. We've been on the course 4 times now and have gotten into our routine as we practiced in Italy and have settled into our new digs at the Hotel Europe.
The rest of the Canadian Rowing Team had already arrived here in Lucerne as they decided to arrive a couple days early to the venue rather than having a pre-world cup camp as we did. The "rest" of the team is comprised of the heavyweight women, lightweight women and lightweight men. In a future blog I will explain this distinction and what crews we have boated in these classes.
Since this is a World Cup regatta I would encourage you to check www.worldrowing.com and you can listen to my races live as we are competing. If you would like, there is a link there to purchase a live video feed, although I think this may only be for the finals. I believe that we race around 2:30pm Swiss time. It may change slightly but that is a pretty good guideline. We will find out this evening (Friday) what the draw looks like for the Heat. The progression in the Men's Eight will be as follows. First place from Heat #1 & #2 will go directly to the final and the rest will go into 2 repechage races where the top two from each will advance.
We are obviously here to win, so no matter who we face in the Heat we plan on punching our ticket straight to the final with a win Friday.
As you may or may not know, I will not be living in the Olympic Village while in Beijing. This decision is based on our experiences from Athens where the bus travel was simply a nightmare. We had to wake up at 5:30am to get the 6:15am bus which could be full, then drive almost an hour out to the course. Upon our arrival we generally watched as the US, British and other federations walked through security after a mere 5 minute car ride from the house they had rented down the street. It was frustrating and the thinking was....why didn't we do that??
You might be thinking....that isn't much, but it truly is when you are trying to peak for the biggest race of your life under the extreme heat of the sun and pressure of the Olympics. Anything that isn't rowing, eating, sleeping or being inside air conditioning is not a good idea.
The reason that I have brought this up is due to some recent developments with the accomodations booked in Beijing for the rowing teams from New Zealand, Italy, France and Great Britain. They booked their hotel near the course ages ago, paid their deposit only to find out recently that they will now be unable to stay in the hotel and will have to either stay in the village or go elsewhere. The ironic part is this. According to reports, the Chinese Rowing Federation has now booked the entire hotel for themselves!! Unbelievable!! That is certainly making us nervous as we are booked in a hotel out by the course. What will be next, we can't stay there due to a health scare?? Amongst ourselves we have joked that on the day of the finals the buses out to the rowing course will "break down" or some unforeseen delays occur and throw a wrench into plans.
Thankfully we are still ok at our hotel but it certainly is casting a dirty shadow over the Chinese Rowing Federation if this stunt is in fact true. I'm all for a fair fight, but to me, that is downright dirty!
Here is a link to the story.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4560089a6656.html
Here is another posted after the one above
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4562848a26500.html
I mentioned some time ago here on the blog that our Beijing Olympic boat had arrived in Victoria....well, we have had some new developments.
While we were trying it out and getting it all setup for the Olympics, we kept on finding that we weren't just quite comfortable in the boat from the way it felt, to the way it ran in the water and even steered. As these problems kept on coming up over and over we began to lose confidence in this boat as our Olympic shell. Ever since I got into the boat I had trouble steering it straight but just put it off to it being a new boat and me needing to be better but it kept on going and going. Finally we did some testing on it to see if it was me, the guys or the boat and it came to be a problem with the shape of the hull. That pretty much sealed its fate right there.
As this testing was going on we were running out of time since we were coming over here to Italy and the Olympic container needed to be loaded with the shell we were going to use in Beijing. We decided that the newest hull was no longer an option but we had to put a boat into the container so we decided to stick with the shell that won the 2007 World Championships. There are a couple of drawbacks there as we used it all winter and it has been well used, normally we want a brand new hull, slightly broken in (2-3 weeks) for all serious competitions.
As the 2007 boat was being loaded we contacted Empacher (german boat builder) and asked them if they would be interested in making a boat for us to try and potentially race in the Olympics. Imagine the phone call.....its like your best client whom you haven't done any work for in 7 years calling you and asking you to take control of its biggest project!! They were very excited and got an amazing boat built and delivered in a week!
We have been rowing in it now for the entire Pre-World Cup camp and it is a very fast boat. We are all happy with the way it runs in the water and responds to our power. The steering is a little touchy for me, but that is just something to get used to. Empacher has long been the standard to which all other boats are measured and they have a long history of making eights....fast eights.
The Canadian Men's Eight hasn't rowed in an Empacher since 2001. We made the change in early 2002 to Hudson and never looked back till now. Hudson are still great boats, they just didn't pay enough attention to all the detail that needs to go into an Olympic hull. That is a reminder to everyone reading this.....its not just another job or another project, the client expects top service and consistent service with every job or you might find the next one goes to.....dare I say it.....Stantec!!!
Above is a picture of me sporting the Trow name while on tour!!
If anyone happens to check this blog over the weekend at home, unlikely, but if you do check out CTV Saturday May 24 at 7pm ET for a documentary called S&M;Short & Male. I will am both short and male and I am in it!
I was contacted back in February of 2006 asking me questions about being short etc. The producers were brainstorming and came up with a short guy who works amongst large men, the coxswain of the Eight is the perfect one. They contacted Rowing Canada and got in touch with me.
The producer, Howard Goldberg (he is the guy in the picture below) arranged to come over to Eton, England for the World Rowing Championships and do some interviews with me and a couple of the rowers. I really can't remember what I said so I may have made a fool of myself, I can't remember! My mother has told me she has seen some ads on CTV promoting it and apparently in one of them I am being hugged by Kyle Hamilton and Adam Kreek and Kyle says "he's just so cuddly"! Wow!
Anyway...check it out if you are sitting at home. If it ends up on youtube.com I will point a link to it from here.
http://tvguide.sympatico.msn.ca/Interviews/Features/Articles/080522_shortandmale_AD
Here we go. It's race time now. I'm sitting in the lounge at the Calgary airport on a layover waiting for the next leg of my flight to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Milan, Italy. Our team will be spending 8 days in Italy in a little place called Erba. It is located about 1.5 hours outside of Milan and is a place that we have come many times for training camps in the past. It is important that we are able to make the 9 hour time shift from our homes in Victoria. We won't have a lot of time to get this done and the training that we do there will be paramount to our success at World Cup # 2 in Lucerne Switzerland May 30-June 1.
As I mentioned in my communicator article, this regatta will serve as our pre-Olympic race and it wil be our only chance to show our speed and measure ourselves against the rest of the world. 4 years ago we raced 3 times in the Olympic year and it was just too much. It never felt like we ever got into a groove during that summer. We were constantly in a state of racing. Since 6 of us were there, we decided this time to focus on one regatta then come home prepare for the Olympics.
The Men's Eight will be coming home after Lucerne but the rest of our heavymen's team will go back to Erba for another training camp then head to Poland for the final Olympic Qualification Regatta. They did not secure spots at the worlds last year and must now do so in Poland around June 15. If you hear about crews qualifying in the paper but don't see any mention of us....thats because we have already qualified.
This is a pretty exciting time. I love racing in Lucerne. It is a beautiful city and an amazing course. Dead straight stretch of land in the middle of town, perfect for a rowing venue. It's rarely ever windy but if it is, you're looking at a tail wind or headwind....never a cross wind.
We didn't attend the first World Cup Regatta this year in Munich where the Australian Men's Eight came in a won over Great Britain and China. They basically stormed out of the blocks throwing everything at it in the first 600m then everyone else slowing started to catch up. We'll see if they do it again in Lucerne or if they try a different approach. The Germans finished fourth which isn't a good result at all with it being on your home turf, but they always seem to suck early in the season then get better through the summer so we expect to see a much better german boat . I'm not sure if the US will be there, but you can be sure they will be contenders, they're always fast.
So the main crews will be the Aussies, British, China and the USA if they show up.
Well....I have to catch a flight, but I will try and keep the updates coming while we are on this 2 week World Cup trip.
For all your Rowing needs visit; www.row2k.com or www.worldrowing.com
Brian
After training last wednesday I had the opportunity to head over to the mainland and have a visit with the employee's at the Burnaby office.
I had a great time meeting you all and I thank you for the chance to be able to bring you into my world as we make the leadup run for the Olympics in August.
Thank you Burnaby!
PS if you or you families have any questions, please email me and I can post the response.
briansprice@gmail.com
Here is a link to a really good article by Randy Starkman. He is from the Toronto Star and is a big supporter of all amateur sport including rowing. A great guy too.
http://www.thestar.com/article/424199
CBC Sports has come and gone and completed the footage that they will be using for the Olympic broadcast. It was quite nice of them to take us out to dinner as a chance for them to get to know us a little bit. We met the most of the CBC Olympic anchor hosts including Scott Russell, Diana Swain and Ian Hanomansing. Ron Maclean was on duty with Hockey Night in Canada and couldn't make it.
They really did great some great shots of us training in the eight, fours, pairs, weight lifting and also erging. I was able to hook them up with our catamaran coach boat which made for some really stable shots. You will all be pleased to hear that the TROW logo was proudly and distinctively displayed the back of my jacket for all the rows in the Eight. It is really obvious whenever they were shooting the Eight from behind. I also had on a Trow vest on for my interview.
I'm not too sure exactly what features they will be doing as the producer kept getting ideas the more he saw of us and got to know us. The reaction we got from the cameraman while shooting the erging footage was great. The guys had finished their 1 hour weights session and he had now been filming them on the erg for about 20 minutes. The guys stopped to grab a drink and he thought that was it. I said "no, that was the warmup, they still have 40 minutes of actual hard work to do!" He looked at me dumbfounded and said "how do these guys do it?" To which Adam responded "hop on and I'll give you a lesson!"
They also shot a "promo" of the Eight in front of a green screen and are hoping to be able to use it in pre-Olympic stuff I guess. A couple guys also had short answer "promo" stuff done with the green screen. I imagine it will be kinda like NHL playoff promo stuff on TSN or CBC.
Anyway....just wanted to let you all know that things are still moving along well here. We have the Olympic Eight (physical boat) pretty much tuned up as we want it. It will be going into the container bound for China in 2 weeks. We leave for pre-World Cup training camp in 2.5 weeks in Italy.....time is flying by. In less than a month we will have raced the World Cup in Lucerne, our only race of the season prior to the Olympics!
Below is a shot of Adam Kreek and I in front of the green screen.....Adam is 6'5" 210 and I am 5'4" 124!!
Always check the Newspaper links section along the right hand side of my blog for the newest articles. Here is the link to the one in the Toronto Star from today.
