As most folks know, the draw came out last night, and almost immediately the abstract notion of "racing at the Olympics" became real with the introduction of actual and simple facts like lane assignments, heat opponents, and race times down to the minute. This morning I took a heap of pictures in the boatyard, and the difference was palpable - both excitment and intensity has ramped up dramatically, and what was somewhat a routine training week almost instantaneously became the 'day before the Olympics.'
And all the activities that go with it were in full relief - heaps of boat rigging, hull buffing (including Mike Spracklen buffing a single himself), oar handle scrubbing and tightening, oar length measurements, footstretcher repairs, and more - including a lot of single scullers flipping and shaking their boats extremely vigorously. The gap between the haves and have-nots can be striking; I helped the sculler from Thailand measure her oars, as she does not have a coach here, whew.
Conditions were cloudy and much cooler than recently, and featured an almost direct tail that one heavily favored crew called "fast water!" Most importantly, today's conditions would be exceedingly fair; here is hoping we see more of this in the coming days.
The regatta operations folks (including US coach Eva Kovach) are working here on having the three-letter notation of the country racing in any given lane on the actual bowmarkers for the first time; check out the photos here (the photos are of the actual bowmarkers for tomorrow's women's quad heat).
Check out the coach's kit for the Ukrainian team; a couple folks here have wagers on who can trade for the full kit, head to toe, come the end of racing. Whoever wins the bet, we want pictures.
Mahe Drysdale doesn't just have speed - he apparently has the balance of a ballerina. After his row today, he reached the dock, and then took out both his oars - BEFORE he got out of the boat. Only then did he untie and climb out onto the dock - nice trick!!
Bit of an odd day for row2k today - yesterday I started hearing a noise inside the 500mm lens, which is, well, not good - so today was mostly dedicated to hauling down to the Olympic Park to visit the Canon desk in hopes of a repair. They couldn't turn it around immediately, so they loaned me the new version of the 500 - a $12k lens. Then they said I could also borrow a copy of the new 1DX, which isn't really on the general market yet - a $7k camera. So I went down there with a broken 500, and came back with almost $20k of stuff - only at the Olympics.
The biggest downside was that this compounded some serious taxi procurement issues and made me miss taking the full rowing team photo out at the Royal Holloway; I had some good stuff planned for it too, bummer.
Sitting writing this in my hotel room at the end of the day, it is impossible not to notice how much attention rowing gets here - most folks know it is a big sport here thanks largely to a few major stars, but the reality of it is another thing entirely. Redgrave we know about, and he is doing a great job in one of the main commentator seats on BBC1, but beyond that, rowing shows up perhaps every 10-15 minutes in some form or another, and this in the run-up programming to the opening ceremonies, in prime time.
The bus ride out and back to the MPC and the Canon desk was long but interesting - the route goes right past Buckingham Palace, underneath Big Ben, past the London Eye and the Tower of London, and today right by the river at the exact moment the big flotilla carrying the torch was going past. Despite the fairly serious hassles and bit of disappointment today, I always remember to take your luck where you find it.
With that, here is wishing tremendous luck to everyone racing this week; really looking forward to watching you go for it.
Comments | Log in to comment |
There are no Comments yet
|
row2k's Olympics coverage is brought to you by:
row2k's Olympics coverage is brought to you by: