Well after nine weeks of touring the back blocks of the european continent we have finally arrived at the peak of the international season. In two days time, I and the rest of the NZ team will be lining up to finish off the 'journey' to the top of the world championship dias.

 

The final build up has been pretty hectic, last time I wrote we had just moved into the 'chalets' (please note the commas there) at the Bloso training centre in Belgium. We spent two weeks staying out at the course before arriving in England on the 14th. As predicted in the last post shifting from Novotel king sized beds to foam bunk beds took some adjustment. Fortunately from a comfort point of view the heat wave over Europe passed on and the weather pretty much resembled a good wet Waikato spring, thank goodness I brought a couple of warm tops with me.

 

As far as rowing goes things really started to come together pretty well, John Robinson started to let the miles come down a bit and the intensity of training remained pretty high. We had a couple of interesting day trips away from the 2km course to a canal just outside of Antwerp, pretty good water but no facilities at all, which made for a very long day. Richard Tonks reputation for inventive ways to push an athletes limits were certainly brought home to me yet again in those sessions. 10 days out from the Champs starting is traditionally a practice race day for the team. The weather produced a howling tail wind which meant very choppy water but some pretty good times. Touch wood this bodes well for racing still to come.

 

Not everything has gone to plan however, about half the team were struck down with a vomiting bug a couple of days after that 2km trial. I went down with it the night before we left to come over to the UK, not a pleasant experience to say the least, but on a side note it was a fascinating insight into the amazing capacity of the human stomach. Fortunately after about 24 hours I was pretty much back to feeling normal again, as was the case for most of the team. A few more people went down after we got to the UK but it seems to have stopped now with enough time for everyone to be right for the start of heats on Sunday.

 

We have a reasonable draw for our heat, we have Canada who will be pretty strong, having finished second in the first World Cup but with first two going through to the semi we should have to waste to much energy to get there. As always however no one will be discounted.

 

start list Heat 1  (M2-)  start time:  20.08.2006 11:36:00   boat prog.: 1-2->SA/B, 3..->R
Lane	Boat	Country
1	GRE	Greece
2	GEO	Georgia
3	CAN	Canada
4	NZL	New Zealand
5	USA	United States of America
6	GER	Germany

 

For those of you wishing to follow results of the heats which aren't being televised (I'm sure most of you know this already but just in case) there is a live race tracker with audio commentary on the world rowing site www.worldrowing.com. Also the NZ Rowing site should have some updates through the week as well as race times for the kiwi crews.

 

Well hope thats not to much of an essay for you to troll through. Thanks again for all supportive messages it does help and fingers crossed we'll have the results to prove come Sunday afternoon. Enjoy your weekend where ever you are. Oh and safe journey to those of you coming to join the fun in Eton, look forward to catching up then.