| 8, 4 and Pair Fun |
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We’re always training hard and spending most daylight hours on the water at the moment. But this last month has seen some extra action and boat class changes. It has all been in an effort to keep the fun and dynamism in the sport in the long gap between the World Cups and the World Championships.
After the Silvretta training camp , we put a second eight together to race our selected GB 8 at the E.On hanse cup in Germany. It’s a private, invitational race and it’s also the longest hardest race of its kind. As well as our GB selected 8, we were going to race an American 8, the Under 23 World Champions from Germany and the (undefeated) senior World Champions, also from Germany. Our ‘Grobler’ 8 was made up of our pair, the coxless four and a spare pair plus Tom Wilkinson subbing in for Matt Langridge. We were up against it for the 12.75km race due to only having 2 weeks to prepare and the quality of the opposition. Hodgey and I were stern pair, so we were able to set a strong rhythm from the first training session. Without going into the gruesome details of the race, we left the US and U23 crews behind and had a big battle, side-by-side, with the World Champions and our GBR8 for about 20 minutes before we pushed on with length and strength and the other two couldn’t stay with us. We rowed away from the Germans who only just managed to fend off our selected GBR8. After 36 mins and just outside the course record we became the first crew from the GB Rowing Team to win the race and the first crew to defeat the World Champions. It was a really impressive race from us and one that I’ll remember leading up to the World Champs. Thanks to the event organisers and sponsors for putting on a great event and a big show at the after party. After returning home, Jürgen had some more fun planned for us in coxless fours. We did a bit of totally mixed up team racing which went really well for me but he’d kill me for posting details… so I won’t. It was good fun to get back into that shell. It’s been a while. I think that was his point – to have fun. And now: Back in the pair for Hodge and me. The whole team are on camp in Italy . The place we’re staying at are really looking after us with great food and even better weather. All the guys are in really high spirits and the team is starting to gel together effortlessly. It’s always nice to get to the business end of the season because selection is over and we can really cheer each other on.
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