Lucerne The Lake of The Gods

Lucerne The Lake of The Gods, the final World Cup regatta, and the last chance to practice your racing performance before the World Championships in 6 weeks time. As you walked around the regatta venue on the banks of the beautiful Rotsee you could tell that these were the thoughts at the back of every athlete’s mind.

This is normally the regatta to which every country turns up to in order to sound out the competition before the Worlds. This year, however, both the Americans and Australian senior teams were notably absent. The latter being because they raced at the two early world cups – Eton and Munich - and have since returned to Australia before they come half way back again to Japan in August. The competition was no slacker for it though. With more and more athletes across the big rowing nations being supported by their federations to train more or less full time, there seems to be none of that post-Olympic lull in standard we came to know and love as young aspiring athletes.

As the regatta developed over the three days of competition, it was clear that Lucerne racing was going to be as exciting and full of surprises as ever. The most notable and eagerly awaited of these was the final of the Women’s Double Sculls final which was set to be a showdown between the Olympic Champions, the Evers-Swindell sisters, from New Zealand, and the newly formed double from Bulgaria containing the twice Olympic single’s medallist, Rumyana Neykova, who have dominated the World Cup season so far in the absence of the Evers-Swindell sisters. The crowd was not disappointed. The Kiwis took an early and seemingly unassailable lead early on to be in their usual, and enviable, position of looking back on the field by the half way mark. At which point most of the athletes around the competition area preparing to race came out of their focused environments to watch the race and listen to the commentary. It is strange that 90 minutes before sitting on the start line against them, we were standing together with the German women’s quad joined in anticipation for the result of the unfolding race. Despite the language barrier, we could tell from the commentator’s tone that the race must be becoming interesting after it had passed out of view. In fact, the Bulgarians had managed to pull back to be overlapping with 250m to go. Stroke by stroke they held their length to row down the Olympic Champions and pip them to the line by 0.06 seconds.

This was the first time that this double had been beaten since 2002, the year that between them they held the World Championship doubles title, the world’s fastest time for the event, the World Indoor Rowing title and world 2000m ergo record simultaneously. Hence this defeat was a momentous occasion in women’s rowing, and one that provides great excitement and anticipation for the coming World Championships and indeed 3 ½ short years to come.
A similar barrier for me was brought down when I think for the first time in my life I actually rowed past Katrin Boron – the most medalled women in rowing and with as many World and Olympic titles as Mathew Pinsent. The fact that she was in a single and I in a quad was a minor detail. It was a small victory and one that I aspire one day to repeat on more level terms!

The results for the British team were generally good. Gold, again, for the men’s 4-, collecting the World Cup title along with it – as did the Women’s 4x despite being defeated by an impressive Russian crew into Silver. This was an interesting and challenging competition for us, as we had to make a last minute substitution the afternoon before our first race. Annie, who came out of the single to join us in the bows, was given a baptism of fire for her first international race in a quad. I would not liked to have been in her shoes, but it is experiences like these that will hopefully build the depth of our squad as we tread the long path to Beijing.

Another performance that must be noted was the first ever World Cup medal for a British men’s quad. In a fantastically timed race they came charging into the line in third, showing just how a crew can climb steadily up the rankings through the World Cup season as they gained in confidence and experience.
The women’s 2x came in with an excellent bronze, having only been formed two weeks before the regatta. The women’s four and pair both also came back with bronze medals, which saw their seats in the first women’s British eight selected since 2001 confirmed for Gifu. Silver for Jo Hammond in the single, also, reconfirmed her position at the top of the lightweight single sculling tree for a second year.

So, we all now have a very good idea of where we stand as we start our final preparations for the World Championships in August. For us this means a two-week training camp in Breisach in Germany, whilst the men go up to Altitude in Austria, then a ten day camp together with the men on the Eton regatta course in the before we depart for Gifu on 18th August. At this stage we can all still get fitter, we can all learn to row better, and we can all get sharper in our racing heads. It is all about who is the most honest with themselves and moves on the most in these areas over the coming weeks, and it is they that will reap the real rewards in Japan.

Editorial by Frances Houghton