When you get back to the boathouse at the end of racing to find tons of athletes running around signing multiple sheets of white paper to accept a position on the US Worlds team, you know some folks had a really good day.
Such was the scene at the close of racing today after six of the seven remaining US "big boats" took a successful run at their respective time standards; all but one of seven contesting crews beat the standard to make the 2006 racing team. I don't have specific lineups at this writing (final lineups should be available over the next few days, and substitutions are still allowed and possible), but the following crews made the standard, with times ranging from 7-19 seconds under the required speed:
The Women's Double that raced missed the standard by a couple seconds; this crew is a potential spare boat. The selected double of Susan Francia and Brett Sickler met the standard at NSRII.
Meanwhile, back at the trials proper, a winner of Final One of the best-of-three format was declared in another eight events; the winner and standard status:
The men's 1x and light men's and women's 1x raced semis today, with two scullers advancing from each semi to tomorrow's Final One.
The day was not without mishaps; in the men's coxed four, the two-seat of the Penn AC ripped the blade off his oar (check out the bladeless oar in this photo) after about 15 strokes (just inside the breakage limit, whew), and in the same lane in the very next race, the two-seat of the winning LM4x took a shot to the chin with an oarhandle during the racing start (three photo sequence starts here - use the Next arrow to see subsequent photo); both races were called back and eventually restarted.
And it wasn't without the theater that can sometimes come from the almost neighborly familiarity that many of the rowers have with one another, even (and sometimes especially) in competing boats. In one of the men's pairs, as the crew was locking on the stake the bowman asked "Is there a rating cap on this piece?" The earnest and diligent stakeboat holder relayed the message to the starting officials, only to find out that the bowman was only kidding.
row2k will be back tomorrow morning to see how many of the day's finals result in folks signing papers, and how many go to a third day.
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