The Thursday before the Games start is a packed day at the rowing course; after the standard practice session, there is a one hour session where crews can enter the starting gates and do a start complete with stake boat folks, the starting boots that wraps around the bowballs, officials, the loud beep, the whole thing.
Then after a half hour break, there is a Spares time trial, and then after another half hour break there are the spares finals, which are followed by mock medals ceremonies. (Thankfully the spares are spared serving as the practice medal winners; that role was performed by volunteers, notably including US referee Scott Woodward as the silver medalist in the men's and women's singles and men's and women's pairs). The mock ceremonies used Coke Zero instead of medals; dunno what to think about that.
Then at 3pm, the draw was held.
You can see the draw in our Resources section; the main item of intrigue was NBC's request to have the US men race in Heat 2 in their event, which will allow NBC to show the race live. The original request was that they be drawn directly into Heat 2; FISA explained that they would do the draw, and then if the US were drawn into lane one, they could flip the races. As it turned out, the US crew was drawn into Heat 2, so everyone's happy.
We spent the morning up at the start, where after getting allowed in, then kicked out, then allowed back (after several phone calls and walkie-talkie discussions) by a group of guys with M4s (who were really good guys, in fact; one pulled out his cellphone to open a Portuguese <~> English translation app), one of the first crews we saw arrive at the start was the Aussie quad with what had to be the most effective bungee I have ever seen; that wake was almost rideable.
One of us also went up on top of Corcovado to take pics for this gallery, and were surrounded by clouds half the time, and also saw a bunch of monkeys; just to keep things interesting, the train caught on fire on the way down.
We mentioned yesterday that the Canadian crews don't have the maple leaf on their blades yet (and still not this morning), and noticed this morning that the British women's eight also doesn't have their insignia on their blades.
The British women's scullers had the most interesting drill of the day today as both the single and double seemed to be rehearsing their starting sequence and high strokes without ever squaring the blades, such that they seemed to be rowing very high, but without going anywhere.
The mainstream media was stalking around the start line looking for gnarly stories to write; they asked me if I had seen a lot of crews rowing with gas masks on. As it turns out, we did see one yesterday, but the athlete was not wearing it, but had let it fall down around their neck.
More interestingly yesterday were the biofeedback sunglasses in use by the Italian light men's four; apparently the glasses employ a Google Glass-type system to put your boat speed data right in front of your eyes.
At least as of this morning, the starting line area is surrounded only by mesh fences, so is still open to viewing by the public. It might happen that the fencing is soon covered by Rio 2016 signage, though I kind of hope not; having local folks watching and getting excited about rowing is always a good thing.
There's also a little food stand directly next to the start tower, maybe 10 feet away; it's open and families were snacking and playing on the plastic slides; good stuff.
Workers climbed the skycam tower this morning to do some maintenance; the guy who went up to the very top scrambled right up, but when he got to the top, seemed to be taking a lot more care when walking around, and you can't blame him – the top platform is just an open metal grid, so you can see straight down as you walk around. He put down a tarp to work, in part I am sure because he didn't want any tools or parts to fall, but I have to think also so not to freak the #@$% out up there.
The test starts went a little roughly, with some crews never getting into the boots, volunteers struggling with the idea of moving the tongues back and forth, and some general growing pains that were starting to work out by the end of the session. They called Alan Campbell as being from the USA – one can wish of course – and then left Mahe Drysdale of all people sitting at the start with his hand up on one of them because his bow was not in the boot; you know, we can't be holding things up for a few seconds for the defending Olympic champion.
The waiting queues for the starts were formidable and comical as well, whew.
By the time of the spares races, the wind from Copacabana we mentioned yesterday was at full strength, and the stretch from 1250-1750 was pretty sloppy going. If I recall correctly, races at the Jr Worlds here were moved earlier in the day at some point; this will be something to keep an eye for as the racing gets underway. We'll try to announce what we can, but you might want to set your alarm or a notification to check so you don't miss any races.
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