A little over two weeks ago waves were breaking over the pontoons at Dorney Lake, however, on Thursday the weather chose to behave itself, and the first races of the Bearing Point World Cup saw light winds and good water conditions.
With a racing programme for the opening day that included mainly small boat events, the conditions were no doubt appreciated by the competitors, and there were few problems on the water, though times never approached world record levels.
The most heavily contested event, with six heats, was the men’s single scull. The current Olympic and World Champion, Norway’s Olaf Tufte, took the first semi-final slot, but was pushed all the way by the relatively unknown Cuban Yoennis Hernandez Arruez, who comes from Guantanamo, and crossed the line only 0.03 of a second behind.
Racing for the first time since the Athens Olympics, German Marcel Hacker won his 1x heat despite having fractured his finger six weeks ago after falling of his bicycle and three times Olympic champion Slovenian Iztok Cop also came home first to secure a semi-final slot. Cop is reported to be considering competing in the cross-country ski event at the 2006 Winter Olympics and has admitted that from October to March, he did "no rowing, not using the ergometer, just skiing," it doesn’t seem to have done his boat speed much harm.
Although representation from the Americas is slight, there are crews from Cuba, Canada and a lone USA pair entered. The North American contingent has a distinctly dark blue tinge about it, as several of the rowers are currently studying at Oxford University and took part the Oxford / Cambridge boat race earlier this year.
The lone USA entry, Mike Blomquist and Chris Liwski in the men’s pair, came third in their heat, picking up a semi final place behind first placed Canadians Ben Rutledge and Kyle Hamilton, who fell foul of FISAs “non-matching hat” rule on the start, and Brits Kieran West and Josh West (no relation) in second. The other Canadian pair of Barney Williams and Scott Frandsen, racing for the first time this season, also won their heat.
The GB men’s straight four looks like its may have a gold medal within grasp after cruising through today’s heats to the semi final ahead of the Dutch. Only Steve Williams is left from the four that won at Athens, though crew mates Pinsent and Cracknell will be competing in the legends Sprint event on Saturday and Ed Coode was down watching the racing this afternoon.
Pinsent (or Sir Matthew if you want to be correct) arrived at the rowing lake this morning without his parking pass, only to find that the gate rottweilers wouldn’t let him in without it. Despite offers from several other people to drive him down to the regatta centre, Matt declined choosing instead to wait to be rescued by another Knight – Sir Steve Redgrave – who may not have been in shining armour but did have the passes...
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