Kiaora All,

 

I thought that in celebration of getting my internet going after 3 days without I should post something about the racing so far.

 

We raced the heat this morning and once again came up against the French crew, who pushed us all the way in the heat and final of the Amsterdam World Cup. The field is even more staked than the last regatta with the Australian World Champions arriving in Europe. The weather turned out to be pretty good only sticking point was a slight head wind slowing things down a bit. It was always going to be tough to get an easy heat as the depth of the pair field has certainly increased this year. Heats 2 and 3 were both a bit full of talented crews and with only 2 going directly through and 3 World Cup medallists in each, it was going to make the heats a tough affair. The Auzzies in heat 1 did not have any known competition to speak of, I guess the advantage of being reigning World Champions... will have to work on that.

 

 

As per last regatta the French managed to get out in front by about 3/4's of a length on us through the 500 metres, with Canada and Australia 2 not far behind us. In the 2nd 500 we managed to cut down some of the deficit reasonably comfortably and with a bit of a push through the 1000 metres we got our noses in front. At that point it was pretty clear that the French and ourselves were going to get through so whilst trying to maintain the lead we took the rating and pressure off a bit. I guess the Frenchies were a little bit keener than us to take the win as the carried past us in the last 500 metres and with 100 metres to go we buttoned off, we figured there are no prizes for fast heat times only finals.

 

Well thats about it for now, we don't know who we've drawn in the semifinals tomorrow yet but I have a feeling we'll probably get the Auzzies. That is not a bad thing will give us a chance to see if we've made any improvement to our first 500 metres and should mean the field tapers off a bit more than the other semi. Will try and touch base again after the semis tomorrow and will attempt to track down some photos of both World Cups as well.