Munich World Cup- Semis and Repechage

Day one finished yesterday with some promising results. Our woman’s quad finished 3rd in their race for lanes and Robin finished 4th in his adaptive single to get good lanes for the finals and show they both are medal chances in the finals.

Day two of the world cup, we awoke to a slightly brighter day with only a few showers.

A few of the crews had already made their respective finals due to winning their heats and having 12 or less entries in their events. These crews were down to the lake early for training. The rest of us went down for a paddle over the course to wake us up and prepare us for our respective semi finals and repechage’s.

• Duncan again started the day well leading from start to finish in his semi to qualify fastest for his final (which happens this evening)
  Both our pairs are straight through to their finals so the woman’s double were next to race. The Polish got in front and dominated while our girls had a good struggle all the way with the Chinese for the second qualifying spot, they were just behind coming into the final 250M, put in a big sprint but it wasn’t quite enough finishing 0.4sec behind the Chinese. They will learn from this and now know what needs to be done in the next 9 weeks to be competitive at worlds. They just raced the B Final and won comfortably leading all the way to finish 7th overall.
• The Men’s Double of Nathan Cohen and Matthew Trott hadn’t ever won an international race together until their heat yesterday. They seemed to like the feeling and lead their semi all the way to win two races in two days and set themselves up as one of the favourites for the final tomorrow.
• Emma Twigg was next up and after leading her semi for the first 1000M over Katherine Grainger (1st world cup winner) dropped her rating a little too much allowing Katherine to row through for first. Emma is in the A Final and has a very good shot at a medal.
• I was next, I drew a fairly good draw with Tufte and Vonarburg likely to be my main competition. Once again I got a good start pushing straight into the lead, Germany 1 kept pace for the first 750M before starting to fade allowing first Tufte, then Vonarburg to row through him. By the 1000M I was comfortably in front, Tufte second and Vonarburg then put in a big effort to move past the German into the final qualifying spot. That was the way it stayed as everyone was content to save the fireworks for the final tomorrow. Was much happier with the way I rowed today so looking forward to the final tomorrow, Campbell, Synek and Griskonis (Lithuanian I raced in heat yesterday) join us in tomorrow’s final. Should be another good showdown and as has been the case over the last 4 years looks like there will be four centre lanes challenging for the 3 medals. Times were very tight with Campbell and myself fairly even and the others all within 5seconds, although don’t think we will see everyone’s real speed till the final tomorrow.
• The Lightweight men’s double raced their semi next, it was another dominating display as they lead from start to finish beating the Italians (world cup 1 winners) comfortably. They will move onto the A final and be very disappointed if they cant bring home some coloured metal as will be the favourites for gold.
• The final race for the kiwis was the lightweight men’s four repechage, they had a pretty good race but couldn’t quite match it with the top guns finishing 3rd and just missing out on the A Final, they race shortly in the B final.

So another successful day, while we would have liked to get 11 from 11 into A finals, 9 from 11 with a relatively young and new team is still pretty good. Realistically all of these crews have medal chances. I would expect to see at least 5 medals and all going well we will see some golds.

Will be back tomorrow after the final, to let you know how it goes.

Mahe