The official website of Pete Reed, Great Britain rower

The last time we raced was 8 months ago at the World Championships, which coincidently shared the same venue. It wasn't a nice feeling going back to face the course of our 4th place defeat last year. We didn't know how fast the opposition were, we were racing as the underdogs and we had a substitute with us.

 Tom Lucy (who recently turned 20) replaced the injured (and recently selected) Tom James in the bows of the boat. Lucy was only in the crew for 4 training sessions before we raced the heat, which wasn't ideal preparation, but he fitted in very well and showed class and maturity of someone a lot more experienced, racing in the lead boat for the first time.He had an equal contribution to the boat in training sessions and all three races and thoroughly deserves his first senior international gold medal.

 After racing well in a tough semi-final draw (which was made up of 5 of the 6 crews from the World Championship final last year (only the World Champions, New Zealand were missing from the event), we were relaxed and confident that we could perform well in the final. Everything went to plan and we had a good lead by half way. I was just enjoying every stroke and proving something to myself once again.

 Of course, we know that we were in seeded lanes and all the crews in that race will move on. The Dutch and Italians, who beat us last year, have experience and class and we are yet to race the New Zealand coxless four, so rather than getting ahead of ourselves we are carrying on with our own preparation with our full crew. Only an Olympic gold will really heal the wounds of Munich 2007.