The first of the 2005 Bearing Point World Cup Events kicks off tomorrow (Thursday) at Dorney lake, the newly built UK rowing venue, owned by Eton College.
Even with post-Olympic retirements, there are 53 Olympic medallists amongst the 500 rowers from 39 nations who are entered in 217 boats. As the host nation, GB has entered the biggest team with 62 rowers in a twenty five boats.
The regatta sees the first Olympic class event in the UK since the World Championships were held at Nottingham in 1986. Indeed, Britain has never held a world cup event before and this is a crucial test for the new facilities at Dorney, which will play host to the World Championships in 2006.
Despite it having been almost 20 years since the UK last hosted a top rowing event, the press coverage, in the build up to the World Cup, has been somewhat lacking on this side of the pond, with the major media interest in the regatta being restricted to the "Sydney 2000 rowing triumph re-run" on Saturday (aka the "legends sprint") where the GB IV- who won at Sydney (Redgrave, Pinsent, Foster and Cracknell) will come briefly out of retirement to race over 500m against the Italian, Australian, Slovenian and New Zealand crews who competed against them in the 2000 Olympic final (where Redgrave picked up his fifth gold medal).
However, word on the riverbank is that months of playing golf hasn't done much for the GB IV-'s chances of a historic repeat victory, even though they have been spotted out doing "stealth training" at Henley recently...
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