Conditions: once again, tailwind and tail current. The humidity is up a bit today, making things a bit sticky, but a bit of a cloud cover is keeping temps down.
We did add a Resources section to our Worlds coverage this morning, which includes schedules and entry lists, the weather report, a course map, satellite photos, and a couple other items.
Each morning, the photographer crew picks up a heat sheet and goes about circling or marking all the crews they intend to photograph. Rainer Empacher's sheet is always marked in highlighter pen - yellow, of course.
The morning practice hour-and-a-half is packed, and the course is extremely bouncy during the hour, due to a step-wise seawall on one side of the course; the crews that go late and get off the water just before the deadline are able to get in one relatively stable trip.
As the US women's quad launched for practice, traffic was such that they needed a push straight off the end of the dock; coach Tom Terhaar grabbed the crossbar of the wing rigger and shoved them right off the end, inspiring one of the crew members to go "Wheeeeee!!" as the crew glided out into the river.
The final-only events raced for lanes today; winners go in the middle of the course, next in the subsequent lanes, etc. The lightweight eight includes only two crews this year, Italy and Japan; race announcer Robert Treharne-Jones pondered the necessity of the race, since the crews would typically be racing for the two middle lanes - with only two crews, of course they're already going to be in the two middle lanes.
Today's program started off with a couple of these "Final 1" races, followed by two hours of C-D semis, then two hours of A-B semis.
Every time he docks his boat, the Polish men's eight coxswain stands up in his seat. I understand it might be tough to see over those guys, but don't you want a hand on the tiller?
I've seen many a nasty Worlds singles semi, but Marika Paige really drew a rough one when she lined up against the top two scullers from this year's Munich World Cup, as well as the top two scullers - different folks mind you - from the Lucerne World Cup.
More World records fell today, including the one-day old light men's single record, set yesterday by Kazushige Ura of Japan, broken today by Vasileios Polymeros of Greece. Ura failed to make the A final today; from world's fastest to the B final, whew.
World Record city:
We had one race go down the the smallest measurable margin today: Germany's Laura Tasch beat Greece's Chyrsi Biskitzi by 1/100 of a second in the LW1x; Tasch goes on to the A-Final, Biskitzi to the Petites.
Heavy metal semi: Olympic Gold medalist Wyatt Allen beat two-time M2x world champ Akos Haller in his C/D semifinal today.
Awww: after qualifying for the A-Final in the M2- (the first in many years, I'm guessing), the Greek bow man reached over and kissed his strokes' hand.
A couple more US collegians have been added to yesterday's feature:
Steve Cheng, cox of the Canada M4+, Yale
Nito Simonsen, Norway M2x, Cal
Scott Frandsen, Canada M8+, Cal
After row2k commented on several rowers who punched or squeezed a bit early yesterday, Mike Altman of the USA among them, Mike wrote to let us know what was going on at the start: "Complaints went thru to Fisa because of the way they took the starts today. Usually, they poll the crews, turn on the red light, then the green is the signal to go - akin to the two-step "Attention, Go" we are accustomed to. Today, they called attention before the red light went on. On instinct I sat up ready to go, when the red light went on I jumped. Apparently this was a problem with a few other crews.
Also, there was indeterminate pause between the polling and the start. The starter seemed determined to start the races dead on time - if it was scheduled for 9:06, he wouldn't start it at 9:05:40. So in the reps, were there are often only 5 crews, he'd start polling at the regular time but then we'd sit at attention and wait for an exteneded period of time until he started us, adding to our anxiousness. I understand some official complaints may have been lodged..."
You don't want to have dyslexia announcing this result, which marked third from fourth in the M2x: BUL 6:08.08 - FRA 6:08.80.
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row2k's Worlds coverage is brought to you in part by:
row2k's Worlds coverage is brought to you in part by: