New Olympic Boat-We've changed!

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!!