Today's medalists: Gold in F4+ Dick Lyon, Larry Hough, Skip Spiering, Dick Draeger, Kent Mitchell
Silver in G4x John Nunn, Elliott Eisenbud, Bryan Belacic and Boris Beljak
4th in A4+ Mike Still, Shawn Heffernan, John Curci, Sean Hall and Kent Mitchell
10 October 02
Ballarat, Aus, 9:30 pm
2nd day of rowing was a mixture of unexpected disappointment and elation. We entered the A4+ (men's fours with coxswain, age range 27-34) with a boat that averaged 36 years of age, with the idea that it would be a good practice run for them for the B4+ final (avg age 35-42) scheduled for Saturday. Making the final 8 was our pre-race goal. Twenty crews from 5 countries were entered in this event, and our hope was that we could survive to the 8-boat final. Unexpectedly we won both the heat and the semi-final, which raised our hopes, and then we placed 4th in the final, missing the silver medal by 1.6 seconds and the gold by 2.9 seconds. The people in that boat were Sean Hall, John Curci, Shawn Heffernan, Mike Still and Kent Mitchell. We led the 2nd and 3rd place crews until 250m to go, and ended in a photo finish with them for 2nd, 3rd and 4th places. Russia won the gold.
In the men's G4x ( quadruple sculls event for average age 65-69), we won our heat in a photo finish over Germany and then placed 2nd in the final behind an Australian quad. Germany was the bronze medalist and this was our 3rd silver medal and 4th medal overall in the first 5 events we'd entered.
Next came the F4+ event, the men's four man boat with coxswain averaging age 60-64. This boat had Dick Lyon, Larry Hough, Skip Spiering and Dick Draeger as rowers, Kent Mitchell as cox. As in all other races today, there was a vicious crosswind creating significant cross chop from the port side for the first 600 meters of the 1000 meter race. We were jumped slightly by a good crew from Melbourne in the first 15 strokes, but pulled even quickly and started to pull away after slightly more than 1 minute into the 3+ minute race. By the halfway mark we led by 0.9 seconds (about 1/3rd of a length ) over the Melbourne crew, which then started a move on us. We stopped the move and went into a sprint with 1/4th of the race to go, and pulled out to a one length victory at the end, for our second gold medal of these Games.
Tomorrow we race out E8+ (eight man boat with an average age 55-60) against the New Zealand 1972 Olympic Gold Medalist eight, and other races.
The weather has been cold, about 41 degrees F and windy for this morning's early races. Is getting much nicer now, and expecting good water and warmer temperatures tomorrow and Saturday.
In yesterday's races, which I negected to report last night, the boatings for the 3 medal winning crews were: G4+ (Gold) Stroke, Skip Spiering, #3 John Nunn, #2 Bryan Belacic, Bow Boris Beljak, cox Kent Mitchell C4+ (Silver) Stroke, Vlado Krizek, #3 Darko Miksic, #2 Sean Hall, Bow Shawn Heffernan, cox Kent Mitchell F8+ (Silver) Stroke Mike Still, #7 Larry Hough, #6 Dick Lyon, #5 John Nunn, #4 Skip Spiering, #3 Dick Draeger, #2 Bryan Belacic, Bow Boris Beljak, cox Kent Mitchell