With less than a day to go before racing in Tokyo starts in earnest, the course and related installations got its first real workout today with the spares racing. A majority of the sweep and sculling spares raced down the course twice after the morning practices had concluded, once in a time trial format, and once in a series of side-by-side 2k races.
More than a few of the spares racing today were seated in Olympic lineups at some point during the season, whether in World Cups or camps, but missed out when final lineups were set; based on the visual evidence of today's racing, everyone was taking advantage of their opportunity to take a trip down the Olympic course. Many took it somewhat easy in case of a call-up to race, while others gave it a full burn.
The camera setups look to be pretty great; between the fixed cameras along the course, camera boats on the course, a camera truck, a cam under the bridge at 700m down, two massive drones, and an overhead cam track over the last 400 meters or so, the broadcasters will have one of the richest visual setups in Olympic rowing history.
The goal today of course was to test the installation and timing systems, as well as the commentary and TV operations, and it probably also gave the rowing grandstands their only real involvement of the regatta.
With all spectators banned from the Olympic venues, the only folks on hand were athletes, coaches, and team support staff, lots of whom stuck around after the morning practice session to cheer on their spares; special praise went to the Canada contingent, who stayed in numbers to support their team alternates.
Everyone regrets the lack of spectators, but as we reported here yesterday, rowing without a crowd may not be a disadvantage.
"We're in for some exciting racing this week" was the commentary team's sign-off, and on the strength of today's spare's racing, we'd have to agree.
We wrote here yesterday that folks here were cautiously optimistic that the COVID situation in Tokyo among both the Olympic family and the Japanese public in general was stable enough to ensure that the Olympics could be pulled off; that hasn't stopped USA betting media to report that the odds on the Olympics staying un-cancelled were steadily dropping.
Notes from the Course
The final crew to qualify for these Olympics was the Lithuanian men's quad, who only earned their slot in Tokyo four days ago when the Russian M4x withdrew, and the Lithuanians pulled out all of the stops to get here. When the Lithuanian crew boarded the athlete bus to the venue this morning, with their oars still bubble-wrapped for transport, they were met with raucous cheers and "glad you made it!" comments from the other athletes; well played, rowing community.
For the wonks; FISA has posted wind data as well as regatta seeding documents; here are the seeded crews for the 14 Olympic events, with seeding mainly seeking to separate strong crews into separate races to avoid placing lower-ranked crews in loaded races in the early rounds of racing.
Yesterday, Brisbane (Australia) was officially named the host of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games; if the Australians construct a new FISA class-A rowing course for those Games, they would be the first country (to my knowledge) to sport three working Olympic rowing venues (Ballarat Lake in Melbourne, Penrith Lake in Sydney, and the new Brisbane venue) in the same nation.
The course will be on Lake Wyaralong, the site of the Queensland State Rowing Center, which appears to be about 85km from downtown Brisbane.
The Canada and New Zealand women's eights will race against each other in Sunday's heat of the event; today, both crews locked on together during the "practice starts," which offer crews the opportunity to get into the gates, get their bow in the boot, and hear a full start as it will actually occur come racing - as well as to test the system itself. The Canada crew blasted off the line, but the NZ women weren't game, and paddled into the course. Rematch on Sunday for sure, with only one crew to advance directly from the heat to the final.
They weren't the only crews who will soon be head to head that found themselves in the same patch of water; definitely a bit of games(wo)manship going on - or perhaps just the first glimpses of who has the better boat speed going into racing.
At row2k, we try to be helpful, no matter the regatta; just today on site, we were asked to describe the format of the Olympic medal ceremony to the ceremony's director (so that it could be rehearsed), asked for help figuring out how the spares racing worked, and, finally, asked whether we had the keys to the "venue technical operations" pod at the starting line (that last one was a definite "no," unfortunately).
The practice medal ceremony originally took place at a glacial pace, making some wonder if the 15' centers of the A finals could hold; on a second go-through it was sped up a bit, inspiring a cautious wipe of the brow among observers.
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