Setembro 2, 2008
Quarter Final
After the heat the attention was quickly diverted to the Quarter finals. I had drawn a much tougher one than my heat with Lassi Karonen and Sjoerd Hamburger expected to be my main competition. Each round the intensity heats up and I was expecting a fairly tough one.
Conditions for the race where pretty nice, with very little breeze and a much cooler temperature than we have had since arriving here. The warm up went well although my stomach was churning by the time I got to the blocks, I coughed and just managed to stop myself from vomiting in the start blocks (will become clear why shortly) then got a reasonable start and into the race. Hamburger shot out, while I paced Lassi. As the race progressed Hamburger started to struggle and soon both Lassi and myself moved through. I was feeling pretty good and felt in control of the race, as I tried to conserve myself as much as possible. Lassi kept pushing and I ended up having to raise the rate a few points to hold him off. At the line he was closing but I managed to hold him off by about 0.22sec and progressed safely as the top qualifier to the semi finals. Hamburger paid for his fast start and blew up, to allow the USA sculler to come through for the third and final spot in the semis.
I got a stomach bug on Sunday and while I had been feeling quite good before and during the race, the effort soon told. As I paddled off to warm down I realised lunch was going to come back up. As I sat on the warm up lake feeding the fish my lunch in front of a very startled Chinese official who thought I was dying, I realised I might be a little sicker than I first thought and might not be able to keep this quiet from my competitors. As Tufte rowed passed asking if I was OK, I realised I suspected right.
I got back to shore and spent a few minutes recovering before realising spewing wasn’t so bad and I was feeling the best I had since getting sick Sunday morning. Confident the worst was over it was back to the hotel for dinner, rehydrating and recovering to get in shape for the semi finals on Wednesday.
Will be back after that
Mahe
