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
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