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I didn’t want to leave the 2009 season behind without writing a short piece about how I’m feeling at the moment. This is therapeutic for me now, but it’ll be interesting to look back on and hopefully interesting to you too.
Hodge and I have had a really good time together in the pair. Training and racing have been fun, challenging, interesting, exciting and rewarding – and I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to start the London Olympiad. I have absolutely no regrets about what I did this year or how I did it. I felt like a machine by the end of the season and I was rowing better than I (or Jürgen) can ever remember; furthermore, training was not accompanied by the usual illness, extreme fatigue and injury of previous years. The longer break after Beijing to properly de-train will, no doubt, have had something to do with this.
 We had a monumental battle on our hands with the Kiwi pair in the final of the World Championships just two days ago in Poland. I am so proud of the way Hodge and I trained leading up to it, how we handled ourselves after the strong semi-final and how much we left out there on the course. Therefore, although I wanted a gold, I am proud of my silver medal. This I’m sure will have a very positive effect on next season.
Jürgen found the right words (in his own Germanic fashion) after the race. He told me that he was proud of me. That he too wanted to win, although he was not disappointed. He said that there was nothing wrong with our rowing and that “You know your position in the team, nothing has changed”, which is what I needed to hear at that moment.
The truth is, only Jürgen, Hodgey and I know just how good our pair is. The rowing is so long and simple. Communication always flows well between the three of us and, when it’s at it’s best, neither of us want to finish the training session. We’ve posted very fast times over all distances from flat out sprints to 5000m races. We’ve proved ourselves against everyone else in the team, time and time again (and that’s not easy – it’s a brilliant team).
It’s early days yet, with many factors still to play out, but I would love to stay as the leading pair for the next season and I can’t think of a good reason why not to.
There’s been talk of Hodgey’s illness during the race: it’s hard to know how ill he was at the time and the body is a resilient thing (especially Hodgey’s body…) but he was in quite a lot of discomfort in the following days. He didn’t tell Jürgen or me about it, and I can understand that as it wouldn’t have helped us. Although the ‘what if?’ game is tempting to play it’s ultimately a totally pointless exercise.
The really brutal thing now, that I’m just coming to terms with as I take a much-needed holiday, is that I know exactly what I’m going to have to do and what I will need to sacrifice for the next 15 months to be fitter and better than I was. All of it, in order to have another shot at what we tried, just two days ago.
There are only two other things I want to say. The first is a huge thank you to our supporters and sponsors. Funding from UK Sport, which is public (national lottery) money, and Siemens (GB Rowing sponsor), allows us to compete year after year at the very highest level. They pay for training camps, boats, travel, coaches – well, everything really. Thanks also to ‘Science in Sport’ for providing the sport-specific drinks and snacks that we use for fuel.
On a more personal level, the Royal Navy have again given me the opportunity to train full-time, whilst still remain as a commissioned Officer in the service and I could not be more grateful. And to friends of rowing, fans of our team and our pair, to my friends and family – you gave us motivation from the very start of the season. Thanks to you all too.
Second and perhaps most important of all, congratulations to the Kiwi pair – I’ve really enjoyed the racing this season and hope that wasn’t the last of our clashes on the water. You deserved the win.
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