Conditions: intermittently strong rain last night has renewed a lot of the flow on the river, creating current enough that some of the pontoon drivers were having trouble getting their launches in place when broadside to the course. A couple world records fell with the help, which would seem surprising for reps, but remember that many of the records that fell in 1999 went down in the reps as well, also with some help from open locks above the starting line.
New world best times today:
Caroline Lind and Lindsay Shoop had a fairly exceptional day today; since most rowers who double up do so in event that occur on different days. With the reps compressed into one day today, they took a winning run at 9:30 in the pair, and then again at 1:06 in the eight; it isn't often that folks have the opportunity to win two races in one day at a World Championships.
Caryn Davies made a healthy return to the US W4x today; the crew finished second in the rep and qualified for the A-Final.
After posting yesterday about Anna Mickelson's bottle tossing, I went through our photos, and sure enough she has the wrist follow-through of an experienced jumpshooter.
A few crews flirted with false starts today, but sat easy just in time, including Mike Altman, who took a good quarter pull, sat back up at the start, and seemed to go off the line pretty clean anyway.
On the flipside, the three-seat of the Slovenian 4- felt the crew wasn't ready, and threw his hand in the air a narrow instant before the starting buzzer sounded. It looked like he didn't miss a beat, starting the stroke just in time, but it may have hurt, as the crew missed advancing by just over a second.
A couple sweep converts faced off in the men's single rep today; Nikola Stojic and Wyatt Allen were both in sweep boats last year (and both rowed in US colleges as well). The two looked pretty solid in the two qualifying places until the Swedish sculler rowed from behind all the way into the lead. The move left Stojic and Allen to duke it out for the second spot in the A-B semis; Stojic took it.
On that note, here's the US collegiate roundup:
Nik Stojic, Croatia M1x, Brown
Malcom Howard, Canada M2-, Harvard
Chris Jarvis, Canada M2-, Northeastern
Kip McDaniel, Canada M4-, Harvard
Melanie Kok, Canada LW4x, UVa
Daniel Casaca, Canada M4+, Cal
Dan O'Shaughnessy, Canada M4+, Syracuse
Iva Obradovic, Serbia-Montenegro W1x, Cal
Wilma Dressel, Germany W4-, Ohio State
Mark Gerban, Palestine LM1x, Drexel
Steve Cheng, cox of the Canada M4+, Yale
Nito Simonsen, Norway M2x, Cal
Scott Frandsen, Canada M8+, Cal
Milos Tomic, Serbia and Montenegro LM2-, Columbia
Coulda raced this one down the Turnpike: Gerban, who is from Philly, and Guatemala's Edgar Nanne Nanne, who calls Nereid Boat Club in NJ home, rowed in the same rep today.
There were only a few really close margins for qualifying spots; in fact, many of the differences were upwards of 8-10 seconds. The tightest races:
Carolina of El Salvador, who is the neice of Central American FISA rep and friend of row2k Eduardo Palomo, looked to be having a really nice row when she caught a doozy of a crab that dragged her into the adjacent lane a few hundred meters into the race. She's a youngster, so will have plenty more chances, but ouch.
More crabs and crablets: Wyatt caught a little digger with 10 strokes to go, one that probably didn't affect his placement all that much, while the South Africa LM2x caught a full-blown boatstopper that ejected an oar and ended the crews race right there.
Rough neighborhood: the Cuban M1x calls Guantanamo home.
There are several crews here from Thailand, but water levels in rivers and lakes in the country have dropped to the point where the rowers have to keep moving their training venues to find water to row on.
Heavies take one for the team: India had an injury in their lightweight four, so they moved a guy from their M4- to the lightweight crew, and scratched the M4-.
Late in the racing, one of the starting officials had a bit of a linguistic relapse back to the days of French starting commands, announcing "quatre minute..."
Another good starting line instruction: "Please get in the race course."
The mic is on: the (Swiss-) FISA commentator caught himself in a faux-pas, announcing the finish order of a rep before all the crews had crossed the line: "And in fifth place...Scheisse"
More from the FISA commentary: "The USA men's pair share a hobby outside of rowing, and that's cooking. We'll see if they can get their recipe going today."
Sightings: FISA president and IOC member Denis Oswald was seen in the boatyard in spandex, whew.
Dan Walsh was representing nicely today, showing up in the row2k shirt issued to the Olympic team members last year. Looking good...
Comments | Log in to comment |
There are no Comments yet
|
row2k's Worlds coverage is brought to you in part by:
row2k's Worlds coverage is brought to you in part by: