With the first clear dawn skies row2k has seen, and flat water all morning, the boatyard this morning was a thing of beauty; as the sun peeked over the hills across from the course, sunbursts filled photographer lenses, while crew members who have been rowing in some pretty bumpy water reminded themselves not to get too used to the perfect conditions. It really was the calm before the storm (though hopefully a storm created by the athletes, and not Ehecatotontli...).
With hours to go before the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Rio Games, some crews were dialing in their starts, others were taking it really easy, and others were doing full bore, pretty long pieces; such is the diversity of training when the crews might have somewhere between 24 and 72 hours until their first races.
During the racing start practice (again with the full start process in place), many crews blasted off a start, turned around a little way down the course, and pulled into the gates for another one; if you have the opportunity to practice dress rehearsals, you take it. The Canadian women's eight made at least three trips through the process, and the GB men's eight two, the latter complete with a huge slapping handshake between coxswain Phelan Hill and stroke Will Satch; it looks like it may be their routine.
With 28 races in eight boat classes, tomorrow's (Saturday's) heats feature the longest program of the regatta, racing on 10 minute centers from 8:30 to 1.. The advancing system for the races is quite varied; the men's and women's singles advance to quarterfinals (or reps in each case), the men's pair, men's and women's doubles, and light men's four advance to semis, and the men's and women's quads advance right to the final.
Scanning down the startlist, one race leaps out as being truly gnarly, and that is the last race of the day, the second heat of the women's quad, which includes the defending world champs USA, 2015 fourth place and 2016 World Cup winner Poland, and 2015 silver medalist Germany, in that order across the lake. That puts the world champ, the Worlds fourth place, and the Worlds silver medalist in the same heat The US did not have a great World Cup, so are not seeded as high as they might be otherwise despite being the defending world champs - which is the likely cause of how the draw played out. It's one to the final, and you have to think no one in the race is psyched about it - although a trip through the reps in this case probably wouldn't be a disaster (so long as the rep isn't also insanely packed).
The light men race tomorrow in what could be the last round of heats for the event at the Olympics; a lot of folks are holding their breaths on that one.
Speaking of unlikely draws, Gevvie Stone wrote me the following "fun fact," which emerges from the fact that the heats are seeded for the draw, but the subsequent lane assignments are random: "Looking over the heat sheets at breakfast, my Dad and I noticed that all the #1 seeds in the M1x are in Lane 4. The odds of that happening are one in 22,500!"
The television in the press tent is running the news on loop (like pizza joints in the US, but on the Euronews channel); most striking but hardly unexpected headline? "Brazil: Overblown Zika Fears."
And few would argue with the fact that the water at least looks clean to the eye - check out this blade. Is the water you row on that clear? Mine isn't.
Sure, bad stuff can be in clear liquid, but the evidence for incredibly polluted, sick-making water is really thin. Yes, 13 American juniors got sick last year, but then 22 American senior athletes got sick in Aiguebelette, where you row on a reservoir for drinking water. When a bug hits a big team, things often get bad before they get worse. Anyway, I won't write about this any more; they'll row through shit if they have to, yep.
Sorry, one last thing: it's certain that Emma Twigg is not afraid of flipping (or she has sick boathandling skills, or both).
The Italians continued their tradition of rigging their boats in the middle of the open area, but might have been outdone by a simple hack employed by the Chinese women's double as they used a pen knife to create a plumb to check pitches.
They're not the only ones who took up residence in the boatyard; immediately in front of the launching dock, a Quero Quero set up a nest in the grass, in which it is protecting three speckled eggs. Quero Quero translates to Want Want in English, so since the bird is in the boatyard, an OCOG credential seemed appropriate.
Finally, someone asked me if I could get a photo of Corcovado reflected in someone's sunglasses; the answer is yep.
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