Live From Beijing - Entry #4
August 15, 2008 | Men's Rowing
Aug. 15, 2008
Racing - Heat and Repechage
Rowing and racing at the Games is an entirely different sport to rowing at World's or at home. It may still be about a boat with eight guys pulling on eight oars at roughly the same time, but the Olympics carry such added pressure that something unexpected always happens. The best teams can "choke," many struggle to remain focused due to all the distractions of the Games, others overtrain during the final stages of their final preparation.
The Olympic build-up is a process that often requires years of planning, focus and drive, during which the athletes and their coaches aim to have all the necessary "tools" at their disposal during their competition. Nevertheless, one can have the best preparation, the perfect facilities on location, race well in the pre-season regattas, and yet completely fail to ensure success at the very moment one has been working towards for so very long. As our coach would say: in these last stages, it is so much easier to lose 5% than to gain 0.1%.
The men's eight is an event at which only eight countries get to take part. During the two heats, both heat-winners qualify for the final; the remaining six boats race in the repechage for the last four spots of the final.
Sunday's Heat
The draw of our heat included Canada, who is the reigning world champion in this event. They are an arrogant bunch, who published a video last winter claiming they were capable of winning gold in Beijing with their worst race. However, our training had also been going well, and we warmed up for our race feeling confident we would offer this Goliath a tough challenge. The conditions on the course were also really fast, a world record had been bettered during the afternoon, and most of us wanted to see just how fast we could go.
We were in the middle of a particularly good piece of rowing during our warm-up when the weather took a turn for the worse. Thunder accompanied by rain forced the organization to first postpone and eventually cancel racing for the rest of the day.
Monday's Heat (take 2)
After Sunday's extensive preparation and cancellation, we knew that getting back on the water with the same level of concentration would be difficult. This is something that all teams were bound to suffer from to some extent, but we completely failed to warm up and race with the intensity we had intended. Once it was clear we weren't going to get ahead of Canada in the last 500m of the race, we reduced speed to save as much energy as possible for the repechage the next day.
Tuesday's Repechage
The repechage is the toughest race, where crews have everything to lose, and some fail to stand up to the pressure and others select themselves for the final. Although we woke up feeling reasonably confident, our preparation was shattered when our bow-rower injured himself during morning practice. We were going to have to race with a spare rower at the last minute.
The starting countries in lane order were: Germany, China, America, Poland, the Netherlands and Australia. We got out to a good start and were in fourth place with a comfortable lead on Poland and China at 1000m. Coming past the first grandstands with 700m to go, the Chinese picked up their speed, driven on by the home crowd. Poland also started sprinting for the line, and the pack started closing around the leaders. Somewhere during this last and most frantic stretch of the race, the Germans got left behind, and we just held on to our lead on Poland, who in turn beat the Chinese by a mere 0.05 seconds.
In less than six minutes, two nations that were clear medal contenders were dispatched to B-final. China invested a massive 130 million dollars in this sport after winning their Olympic bid in 2001, aiming to reap in as many medals as possible during these Games. Germany took silver, gold and silver at World's during the previous three years, and the men's eight is the flagship of their rowing fleet. Meindert and I looked at each other after the finish and couldn't believe [former BU teammate] Flo (six-seat in the German eight) was out. We knew how hard he had fought against his rivals and the political games of the rowing federation to make the crew. He had performed really well and consistently all year round but will not be racing us in the final on Sunday.
