Moe’s Missing Bib: Tales of Rowing World Cup II

The Great Britain men’s eight crew on the medal podium at RWC II Eton Dorney. Coxswains should really stand at the front! (Photo British Rowing)

HTBS’s Greg Denieffe reports from Eton Dorney:

Dorney Lake, Eton, has just hosted its third international rowing regatta in as many years and once again the weather has been a major talking point. World Rowing’s ‘Fairness Committee’, led by Thor Nielsen worked overtime and both Saturday’s and Sunday’s lane positions were re-drawn. There were some exciting races and some crews pushed out into the less favourable lanes exceeded expectations whilst some of those in the more sheltered lanes (lanes one and two) like Marcel Hacker and the British men’s quad, struggled. Why? Well, I think that the cross/cross-tail wind was finding its way through the access gaps from the warm-up lake and lane one wasn’t always the calmest on the course. It’s a tough decision but personally I would have preferred if they had kept the chevron system.

There were plenty of crab-catchers on finals day, with the Chinese W2x and the Great Britain W4x catching boat-stoppers in their sprints for the line. Even Ondřej Synek, gold medalist in the men’s single was guilty of catching one and that in a favourable lane in the early stages of his race.
 
The results and race reports for Sunday’s finals are on the World Rowing website.

Keen eyed spectators would have noticed that the Great Britain men’s eight who took the gold medal from Poland in the final 100m were not all wearing their yellow bibs as World Cup leaders in their row-past after collecting their medals.

The GB men’s eight on their victory row after the final race of the World Cup Regatta on Dorney Lake. Moe Sbihi in the ‘5’ seat.

Moe Sbihi, the tall (6 ft. 8 inch) powerhouse in the five-seat, was missing his after handing it to a lucky spectator. As usual, I watched the racing from the 1,750m mark and after the last race of the day I thought it would be a good idea to see what the view from the grand-stand was like. The presentation for the men’s eights had just finished and Moe walked past on his way to see his family. On his way back to the pontoon for the traditional row up the course for the medallists to be acknowledged by the spectators he kindly handed his bib to my daughters; a very kind gesture that they won’t forget. In truth, even the large bib came up a bit short on him (2nd left back row, picture on top) and Pete Reed (bottom right)!

One size fits all? Hannah wearing her World Cup leader’s bib.

So, what crews caught my eye? The New Zealand men’s pair was phenomenal, again! They took five seconds out of the rest of the crews in each of the splits from 500m to the finish setting a new World Cup best time of 6 min 16.01 sec. The Croatian men’s quad beat the German Olympic champions in magnificent style and bossed the last 500m with power and precision that was a joy to watch.

Race of the day was the men’s lightweight-four final between Denmark and New Zealand. New Zealand led by 0.29 at 500m, 0.20 at 1,000m and 0.90 at 1,500m and then the Danes started their charge but fell just short by 0.04.

Eric Murray and Hamish Bond (NZ M2-) with their gold medals – The best crew in the world, now or ever?

The final World Cup regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland, is less than three weeks away and it should be the regatta of the year. With the World Championships at the end of August in faraway Chungju, South Korea, only crews that step up at Lucerne can expect to be sent. But before that we have Henley Royal Regatta to look forward to and it is nice to see such a high calibre entry in the Diamond Sculls. Olympic champion Mahe Drysdale (NZL) races in this weekend’s Holland Beker in Amsterdam and is joined in the Diamonds by Alan Campbell (Tideway Scullers School and GBR) and Geordi Bozhilov (Nacional Sport Akademi and BUL), silver and bronze medallists at Eton Dorney.

World Cup II - Results

Emma Twigg took gold in the single sculls at the World Cup II. Photo Rowing New Zealand.

The World Cup II races at Eton Dorney have now ended with New Zealand topping the medal list. World Rowing website has already posted race reports and result lists. Read them here. You can watch the races here. (I am not sure that you are able to watch the races depending upon where you are located in the world.)

FISA World Cup II at Eton Dorney (Day 1 + 2)

Photo: Dorney Lake website.

How did it go yesterday at FISA World Cup II at Eton Dorney? Read Rachel Quarrell's report in the Daily Telegraph here (it has a easy-read result list, too). Of course, FISA's correspondent wrote reports, which you can read here (going to this page, click around on the different links to get all the race reports. Remember, the renown English weather has forced the organisers to mess around with the race schedule). HTBS's good friend Bryan Kitch had an interesting take on the World Cup II yesterday on his RR - absolutely worth a read, here.

Update 1: Sunday start list here (as a PDF).

Update 2: Rachel Quarrell on Tom Aggar, here.

Today is Dorney Day!

Today, the second round of FISA's World Cup starts at Eton Dorney in England. Among the forty nations that will compete today and this weekend, many took medals at the 2012 Olympic rowing regatta at Dorney Lake, or at the first round of the World Cup regatta in Sydney earlier this summer, or only a couple of weeks ago at the European Championships in Sevilla. Strangely, no women's eights have signed up for this second Cup at Dorney.

FISA's World Rowing website posted an article about who to watch. Read it here. All around the web, you will find rowing experts giving you their view on whom is going to medal at Eton Dorney. HTBS has decided to stay out of trying to stare into the crystal ball. We would, however, like to express that we think it is unfortunate that Women's Henley is arranged at the same weekend...

Tickets for U.K. World Cup Selling Fast!

Photo: British Rowing.

British Rowing writes on their website:

Organisers of the Samsung World Rowing Cup at Eton Dorney next month say that tickets are selling fast. They hope that anyone interested in seeing some world-class sport at one of 2012’s iconic venues will think about signing up quickly for the event from June 21-23.

Pre-purchase tickets for Sunday 23 are almost sold out with a few hundred remaining and there will only be a limited number available on the door on that day. So then attention is turning to “Super-Semi-Saturday” when crowds will be able to see their 2012 heroes and the stars of tomorrow in semi-finals in all events plus seven finals.
 
“It has been a privilege to see how much interest there is in the event”, said Ben Hunt Davis, himself a Sydney 2000 Olympic gold medallist who is Chairman of the Organising Committee. “We are nearing a sell-out on pre-sales tickets for the Sunday, but my experience of World Cup regattas is that semi-finals on Saturday can have some of the fiercest and tensest of racing as crews battle to take one of only six slots in the final”.

The spectators will be able to watch the action from start to finish on a big screen – a first for a World Cup in the UK. There will be food outlets offering street-food style cuisine and a range of retail outlets. The organisers have also made space available along the bank for spectators to picnic. British Rowing will run a “sport experience” area where spectators can have a taste of rowing first-hand and see how close they can get to the “gold standard” for their age and gender. The GB Rowing Team members who shone at Eton Dorney last summer at the Olympics have already talked of their excitement at competing there once more and reliving the memories.

Men’s four gold medallist Pete Reed summed up the excitement of returning when he said:  “The World Cup at Eton Dorney will rekindle the Olympic fire we all felt there last summer. The venue is stunning, great for our sport and should continue to inspire our talent of tomorrow”.

Reed’s Olympic gold medal counterparts Andrew Triggs Hodge, Alex Gregory and Helen Glover are all back in full training and will be raring to go in front of the home crowd alongside a host of GB’s silver and bronze medallists from the Games.

Racing will open with heats and Repechages on Friday before moving to semi-finals and finals on Saturday and World Cup finals on Sunday. On Friday any school wishing to attend can benefit from a ticket deal that offers two free adult tickets for every ten child tickets purchased. The aim is to inspire the next generation.

On-line ticket sales are available here.

Spectators can also purchase tickets over the phone through the Royal Windsor Information Centre by calling 01753 743915.

Vandals In Subfusc?*

Rowing as a sport started at Eton College – though not all of its practices, such as those shown here on the 4th June Celebrations, were universally adopted.

HTBS's Tim Koch writes,

On my way to the 2013 ‘Henley Boat Races’ at Eton College’s Dorney Lake (which was also the site of the 2012 Olympic Regatta) I  crossed the footbridge over the river from Windsor into Eton and was saddened to see that some of the boathouses on the site known as ‘Rafts’ have been demolished with the intention of replacing them with luxury apartments. This is especially significant as it was from this site that rowing at Eton College started and this is important as it is generally accepted that the school itself was the birthplace of rowing as an amateur sport.

Rafts in June 2011. The boathouses from left to right are River House, Winters (both c. 1890), Tin Shed (the red brick building, c. 1947) and Pilkington’s (c. 1900).

Rafts in March 2013. River House remains but Winters, Tin Shed and Pilkington’s are gone.

In his four-volume, 2,500-page work entitled The Sport of Rowing, Peter Mallory devotes an entire chapter to Eton. It starts:

You may be surprised to discover that the origin of the sport of rowing can be pinpointed to a single location in the English countryside. Rowing, not as a regulated guild profession of the British working class but as an organized recreational activity of the privileged British upper class, uniquely began during the last half of the 18th Century at a single site, Eton College, an English (fee paying) school.

Mallory points out that, without any support from the school authorities 250 years ago, the boys were taking to boats during the spring and summer months, renting boats from the waterman establishments along the Windsor and Eton shorelines. The most important of these ‘waterman establishments’ were at ‘Rafts’, a 200-metre site between Windsor Bridge and Brocas Meadow on the Eton side of the river.

In An Eton Camera 1920-1959 (1983), PSH Lawrence wrote:

Rafts like so many Eton institutions was for many years free enterprise. The six separate sections were at various times run by different local boatmen ... Not until 1909 did the whole length come under the ownership of the Eton College Boathouse.

Searle’s were at Eton between 1850 and 1870. © Royal Windsor Website (RWWS).

By 1895 Searle’s had become Halliday’s.

 A picture of Halliday's in 1898. © Royal Windsor Website (RWWS). 

It is undeniable that, following the construction of its world-class rowing facility at Dorney Lake, Eton will have much less use for the boathouses at Rafts which, in any case, have long been ‘unfit for purpose’ and used mostly for rowing ‘below team level’. They are not particularly old or attractive buildings – especially the ugly late 1940s red brick building strangely known as ‘Tin Shed’. Perhaps worse damage was done in the 1970s when an attractive building between the current development and Windsor Bridge was demolished and replaced by the existing soulless structure. Also near the bridge is the former Eton College Boathouse, now in residential use. A fine early 18th century red brick construction, it survives not least because it has a ‘Grade II’ Preservation Order.

Eton College and the site developers, Bewley Homes, have produced a very complex, elaborate and (naturally) self-justifying website showing their plans to provide 13 new residential units, boat shed space..... and public realm enhancements including providing public access to the river front...’.

The website includes a very full ‘Heritage Statement’. This may be a legal requirement but I think that its depth shows that Eton is taking its responsibilities as a custodian of a great historical legacy seriously. The Statement is a large document but HTBS readers may find Appendix 6 (a history of the boathouses) and Appendix 7 (Eton’s future use of non Dorney boathouses) the most interesting.

Appendix 6 concludes:

The (boathouses) broadly illustrate local social and economic trends associated with rowing, both commercial and in relation to the college, at Eton in the 19th and 20th centuries. They are not of national historic interest and do not have an exclusive historic link with the college....... They are essentially sheds for storage and manufacture that were converted and altered at different times .... Very little remains internally today, particularly in the earlier buildings, to illustrate these uses.... the buildings stand today as an unremarkable group of disparate structures built by a variety of owners for a variety of specific uses.

Reassuringly, Appendix 7 states that, for both ‘practical and emotional’ reasons:

There is a real and genuine enthusiasm within Eton College to continue a rowing presence at Rafts....

As this drawing shows, the sites of the previous four boathouses will still be distinctive and Pilkington’s will be redeveloped to include a boathouse for use by the School, at least in the near future. Fours, including the special coxed fours used in Eton’s version of ‘bump racing’ will be racked here (though the new storage will not be able to take eights).

The rear of Pilkington’s in Brocas Street in June 2011.

The site of Pilkington's in April 2013. River House can be seen over the fencing.

My initial instinctive reaction to the development at Rafts was to be opposed to it, dismissing it as a money grabbing exercise by a very wealthy body that already enjoys enormous tax advantages. On reflection I have concluded that, while the site has great emotional appeal, the actual buildings that stood until recently were not especially important and perhaps the worst losses were suffered some time ago. The inclusion of a new Eton boathouse in the development, even with very guarded remarks about its future use, is of course to be welcomed. Importantly, rowing in some form will continue at Rafts. In his conclusion to his chapter on Eton, Peter Mallory wrote:

There is no competitive rowing program at any level on earth with such a cornucopia of facilities..... with such historic ritual.... with such a long tradition of excellence.

The school motto - Floreat Etona (May Eton flourish).

Sadly, the 20th century incarnation of Rafts is an unavoidable casualty of the ongoing development of rowing at Eton. Hopefully its twenty first century embodiment will continue to play some role in the evolution of the sport at this unique institution.

Dorney Lake - also known as The Eton College Rowing Centre. How many schools can boast such a world-class facility.
 
*Subfusc: Formal academic dress worn by Eton College teaching staff such as the headmaster is wearing here.

© Colour Photographs Tim Koch

Clean Sweep for Oxford

Photo: www.theboatrace.org

Despite bad weather, the Henley Boat Races were held this past Saturday, but not on the usual Henley Course. Instead, the races had been moved to Dorney Lake as mentioned before by Tim Koch. The whole affair – four races – ended with a clean sweep for Oxford. Read the report on The Boat Race website here, and the article by Rachel Quarrell of the Daily Telegraph, here. Quarrell also has a little sprinkle of news from this year’s first World Cup regatta in Sydney, Australia.

A more detailed report from Tim Koch will follow.

Results 2012 Paralympic Rowing Regatta

Great Britain takes gold in the Mixed Coxed Four (LTAMix4+) at the 2012 Paralympic Rowing at Eton Dorney: Lily van den Broecke (cox) [hidden], Pamela Relph, Naomi Riches, David Smith and James Roe.

Here is a link to the Results in the 2012 Paralympic Rowing Regatta at Eton Dorney. Click here.

Adaptive Rowing: Removing Barriers

Tim Koch, HTBS’s special correspondent in London, writes about the Paralympic Rowing Regatta which starts tomorrow, Friday:

Rowing will make its second Paralympic Games appearance starting on Friday, 31 August at Eton Dorney. Forty-six men and forty-six women will race 1,000 metres in four events, three of which allow for different ‘functional ability’. All the finals will take place on Sunday, 2 September.



It is likely that London will be the first Paralympic Games to sell out. As of 28 August, 2.4 million tickets out of a possible 2.5 million tickets had been sold. I had earlier assumed that I would be able to pick up tickets to the rowing at any time but this was a big mistake, it looks as though I will have to watch it on television.

The first ‘paralell’ games were held in Rome following the 1960 Olympics. These were inspired by the ‘Stoke Mandeville Games’ for disabled British war veterans which started in 1948 and held to coincide with the London Olympics of that year. Though it took forty-eight years for rowing to be introduced into the Paralympic programme, starting at Beijing in 2008, the international governing body of rowing, FISA, introduced adaptive rowing to the world championships in 2002. ‘Adaptive’ means that the equipment is adapted to the user rather than the other way around.

The sport is now practiced in 24 countries and Concept 2 and other companies have responded accordingly. In Britain the first rowing club for those with a disability was affiliated to British Rowing in 1998 and there are now twenty-one clubs that offer, or are dedicated to, adaptive rowing. In the years leading to Beijing, UK Sport gave £1.3 million to the Paralympic Rowing Squad and increased this to £2.3 million for London 2012. Eleven rowers are receiving ‘Athlete Personal Awards’ designed to let them focus on their training.

USRowing has twenty-five adaptive rowing programmes currently running in the United States and in 2010 the Head of the Charles in Boston included an adaptive event for the first time.



The four events at Dorney are men’s and women’s single sculls, mixed sex doubles and mixed sex coxed fours.

The single sculls are ‘AS’ class i.e. the rower’s impairment means that they can only use their arms and shoulders to move the scull. Stabilising floats must be attached to the riggers.

Mixed double sculls are ‘TA’ which means the trunk, arms and shoulders can be used.

In the ‘LTA’ mixed coxed four the rowers may use legs, trunk and arms as is usual but they qualify by having an impairment which affects their ability to row. According to the British Paralympic Association website:

All impairment groups except athletes with learning difficulties are eligible (but the latter) look set to compete in Rio after an (International Paralympic Committee) vote in 2009 reinstated athletes with learning difficulties in four sports including rowing.

The cox is not required to be disabled and no more than two of the rowers may have a visual impairment. In the much fancied British four, James Roe and Naomi Riches are partially sighted, Pamela Relph has arthritis and David Smith has a fused ankle.

I do not know what the view of the Paralympics is outside of Britain but the excitement and anticipation here is palpable. In a very short space of time I, like many others, have changed the way that I view disabled people and sport. The Paralympians themselves have brought about this advance by their obvious total commitment to their training and to their ultimate goal. Many people no longer view them as ‘disabled athletes’, but see them simply as ‘athletes’.

2012 Paralympic Rowing Regatta

Helene Raynsford of Great Britain.

Paralympic racing starts on Friday 31 August, at 9:30 a.m. at Eton Dorney, outside of London. Finals will be raced on Sunday 2 September. A total of 23 countries will be represented by 108 Paralympic rowers competing in one of the four Paralympic boat classes. FISA writes in a press release:

The four Paralympic boat classes are the AS women’s single sculls (ASW1x), the AS men’s single sculls (ASM1x), the TA mixed double sculls (TAMix2x) and the LTA mixed coxed four (LTAMix4+). There will be 12 crews racing in each of these four events, representing a total of 48 boats.
Brazil and Ukraine have qualified crews in each of the four Paralympic boat classes, with six nations having qualified three crews each.

Qualification began in 2011 at the World Rowing Championships, where the top eight finishers in each boat class qualified a spot for their country at rowing’s second ever Paralympic Games. At the Final Paralympic Qualification Regatta this year in May, a further two Paralympic spots were attributed to the top two crews in each event. The final two entries in each event are invitational and have been allocated by the Bipartite Commission composed of representatives of FISA and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

FISA’s “adaptive” rowing, has been part of the World Rowing Championship programme since 2002 and, in 2005, the IPC announced the inclusion of rowing into the Paralympic Games. At the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing, rowing’s first Paralympic Rowing Regatta was staged. FISA has “adapted” the boats so that the adaptive rowers can compete in the same sport with the same field of play and rules.

2008 Paralympic Champion in the AS men’s single sculls, Tom Aggar of Great Britain, a former rugby player, will be aiming to win gold once again in front of a home crowd. He has not lost a single World Championship since appearing on the international rowing scene in 2007.

In the AS women’s single sculls, only a few 2008 Paralympians will be lining up once again in London. Beijing silver medallist from Belarus, Liudmila Vauchok, will aim for the podium once again. Vauchok is also a multi Winter Paralympic Champion. Strong contenders will be 2009 and 2011 World Champion from Ukraine, Alla Lysenko, as well as 2010 World Champion and 2009 and 2011 world silver medallist Nathalie Benoît from France.

In the TA mixed double sculls, China was the Paralympic Champions in 2008. In London, the Chinese athletes racing this year will be different from those who won gold in Beijing. Xiaoxian Lou and Tianming Fei have only competed once internationally before these Paralympic Games, when they became World Champions last year in Bled, Slovenia. They will be facing Australia (whose Kathryn Ross rowed to silver in Beijing) and Brazil (whose Josiane Lima won bronze in 2008).

The reigning World Champions in the LTA mixed coxed four are Great Britain, having won gold in 2009 and 2011 and silver in 2010. Their London line-up is different to the one that won bronze in Beijing with only Naomi Riches continuing in the boat. Their toughest competition is expected to come from Canada who were World Champions in 2010.

To view the entries and provisional timetable, please click here.

Stay tuned here and www.facebook.com/WorldRowingAdaptive for up to the minute information and photos from the regatta.

The London Olympics’ Rowing Programmes, Official and Unofficial!

Photo: British Rowing

HTBS’s Greg Denieffe went to the Olympic Rowing at Eton Dorney and could not find an official rowing programme. A kind lady with a rowing mad friend saved him. Here is Greg’s story:

1908, 1948 and 2012. The three years when the Olympics were held in London. Of course, the rowing was held outside the capital each time; Henley-on-Thames had the honour in 1908 and 1948, and Eton Dorney in 2012. Now imagine looking forward to the Games for seven years and imagine looking forward for seven years to be at the Olympic Regatta, and imagine getting tickets for the rowing in the lottery. Yes, I would go to the ball!

On Sunday 29 July, we joined the other thousands and thousands of people on the shuttle buses and on the long walk to the course. Once inside we passed the queues for the toilets, the water pumps, the food sellers and the souvenir stalls. We would buy our programme further up the course. There were lots of programme sellers and they were selling The London 2012 Olympic Games Official Programme for ten pounds and The Official Olympic Games Daily Programme for five pounds. All very nice, lovely glossy magazines with loads of articles about what were happening at all the Olympic venues; but I would like The Rowing Programme, please! “Sorry sir, but we don’t have a sport specific programme”. Don’t worry readers, I got over it, but it rankled, just a bit. You see, I’ve been to a few big rowing events and I’ve always had a programme, but not this time it seemed.

The 1908 regatta was held at Henley-on-Thames on July 28 and the three following days and they had a daily programme. That’s the way to do it.

The cover of the official 1908 rowing programme for Wednesday 29 July.

Even in 1948, at the so called Austerity Games there was a different colour programme for each of the four days of the regatta held on the 5, 6, 7 and 9 August. Did you notice the crowds in the BBC production of Bert and Dickie, all waving the correct programme on finals day?

The cover of the official 1948 rowing programme for Monday 9 August, finals day.

Alas, 2012 was different. No official rowing programme. There was one for sailing, and one for football and daily ones for the athletics. Now, I think a sport that produced two gold, two silver and two bronze medals for Great Britain in Beijing and promised to deliver more in London deserved, at least, a programme.

The following day we returned to Eton Dorney for a very short day’s racing. Like sheep, we found our place on the course as close to where we had been the previous day. Making ourselves as comfortable as we could, we waited for the first race and as soon as it finished, I noticed a young girl in front of me with what I thought was, you’ve guessed it, a programme! I politely enquired of the young girl’s mother as to where this seemingly magical document could be found. “Oh” she said, “a rowing mad friend made it for my daughter”. So that was that, I thought. Not so. Seeing the look of disappointment on my daughter’s face (and mine!), the kind lady produced a spare copy from her bag and handed it over. What luck?

The week before we set off to Eton Dorney, I bought I-SPY FLAGS to keep my six-year-old busy and it certainly did. With the flags of all the competing countries fluttering over the grandstand, she was busy spotting and ticking and for the medal ceremonies there were more flags and even people wandering around draped in flags. We even spotted the correct shaped flag of Switzerland!

The Cover of the ‘Official’ I-SPY FLAGS.

This is what ispymichelin.com has to say about their little books:

‘Do you remember the popular Michelin I-Spy books? If you were a child in the 1950s and 60s the answer will probably be yes.The iconic book collection was back on the shelves for Christmas 2009 for the first time since 2002, encouraging children of all ages to get out and explore the world around them.

‘Created by Charles Warrell in 1948 the pocket-sized picture books were designed to develop children's curiosity, powers of observation and sense of discovery. Each book was based on a specific theme I-Spy Cars, I-Spy in the Country, I-Spy on the Road, I-Spy Below your Feet and so on. Within the 40-page books were illustrations of things for children to spot which earned them a certain number of points.

‘During its heyday Michelin I-Spy had a cult following with more than 1.5million children becoming members of the I-Spy 'tribe', headed up by Big Chief I-Spy, Warrell himself. Once children had 'spied' all of the items in the book they sent it to Wigwam-by-the-Water (later Wigwam-by-the-Green) in London and completed books were rewarded with badges.’

What we now had in our (yes our) possession, was another ‘spotting’ book, The completely unofficial I-SPY book of Olympic Rowing 2012. A very well thought out 16-page booklet that the author should be very proud of. The ‘programme’ has a nice introduction, followed by details of all the Great Britain crews, including photographs. Next are seven pages of blade colours. Throw in a few specials like Jürgen Grobler and a rigger jigger and there were hours of fun to be had.  Of course there is a spotting box to tick and the I-SPY points for each ‘spot’. The last two pages are a race schedule and maps of the course. The only snag was how would I keep my six-year-old from filling in the boxes until I had a chance to copy it? Bribery of course!

I hoped to meet the kind lady who gave it to us and find out who the compiler was, but although we returned for two more days of racing, we never saw her again. Here are a few pages for HTBS readers to enjoy.

It was great to be part of the Olympics and see some of the best rowers in the world at their peak.  Let’s hope someone down Rio way has the good sense to be reading HTBS and is in charge of the Olympic Rowing in 2016.

Going With Dad To Meet The 2012 Olympic Stars

You have to love those rings.

Just to prove Tim’s point on mixing with the ‘great and good’ in his comment in yesterday’s blog post, the 1,000th post on HTBS, Greg Denieffe of HTBS sent some photos from his visit to the Olympic Rowing Regatta. Greg brought his daughters, Hannah, 6, and Maeve, 3. Greg writes, ‘There are plenty of wonderful photos on the internet and in the papers, but these are the ones that are special to me’. I am sure that Hannah and Maeve will agree, and in many decades from now the girls will tell their children and grandchildren how their father brought them to the Olympic Rowing Regatta at Eton Dorney so they could talk to the Olympians and hold their medals - it was at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

When we didn't have any Olympic tickets one day, we went to the 1948's instead.

Richard Chambers from Coleraine shows Hannah and Maeve his ML4- silver medal.

Peter Chambers got a silver, too.

Got our hands on an Olympic Torch. Unfortunately, we had to give it back.

Bowman Kasper Winther of the Danish lightweight four shows Hannah his bronze medal after a breathtaking final. RSA won their country’s first ever rowing gold denying GBR on the line after DEN had led for 1,800m.

The one and only Iztok Cop of Slovenia with his hard won 4th Olympic medal. He turned 40 in June and won his first in 1992. This was Hannah’s favourite moment of a very special day.

(Copyright © photographs Greg Denieffe)

Rule Britannia

The British Four leads Australia and the Unites States at 1,750 metres.

After having returning from Eton Dorney, HTBS’s Tim Koch gives here an euphoric report,

It is said that you should never post anything on the Internet when you are angry or drunk. As I write this, having just returned from the final day of the Olympic Regatta at Dorney Lake, I am very far from angry but I am drunk – not from alcohol but from the success of British Rowing. Readers not from these islands will have to forgive the parochial nature of this report but the last four days of rowing finals have been rather exciting for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Where to start?

WLwt2x – Katherine Copeland and Sophie Hoshing.

All of the 47 strong GB Squad reached the finals. British rowers and scullers have won four golds, two silvers and three bronzes – a new record for a modern Olympic regatta. View the 2012 rowing medal table here (but also the 1908 medal table here).

Until this week British female rowers have never won gold at any Olympics  - now they have changed this record by winning not one, not two but three events. The double scull of Watkins and Grainger and the pair of Glover and Stanning were ‘expected’ to win but the lightweight double of Hosking and Copeland was more of a surprise (especially to them, I think).

The great ‘needle match’ between the old rivals Australia and the British men’s heavy weight four resulted in the fourth win in four Olympics for the Brits. It was also coach Jürgen Gröbler’s ninth gold in nine Games, three for East Germany and six for Britain, a remarkable record.

Miraslava Knapkova winning the Women’s Sculls.

It is true that there have been a couple of ‘disappointments’ for the home crowd, but it is a mark of the ridiculously high standards that British rowing supporters now have that two silvers are regarded as below expectations. These came in the men’s lightweight doubles and men’s lightweight fours, two races that were both lost to the British crews in the closing seconds. It could so easily have been six victories for a country that did not win any events in the Olympic Regattas of 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976 and 1980!

In his closing speech, Denis Oswald, the President of FISA, the International Rowing Federation, said that the 2012 London Olympic Regatta was the ‘best ever’ for four reasons. These were the standard of the competitors, the excellence of the organisation and the volunteers, the Eton Dorney venue itself and finally ‘the wonderful crowd, cheering and loving our sport’. Well said. Rio has a very tough act to follow.

Ready to go…

The four flags.

The remarkable 2,000-metre zip wire carrying the overhead TV camera. No camera has covered the whole length of the course before.

Soulmaz Abbasiazad of Iran in the W1x D Final. The Games are taking place during Ramadan.

The British Four leads Australia and the Unites States at 1,750 metres.

M4- Stroke Andrew Triggs-Hodge called the row a masterpiece but added that it has been utterly terrifying.

What it is all about – Knapkova’s gold medal.

MLwt2x – The Danes Rasmussen and Quist start to move in on the British double of Purchase and Hunter.

These charming supporters of Team GB are members of Leander.

You could be forgiven for thinking that every supporter at Dorney was British, but these, slightly disappointed, gentlemen were from Gothenburg, Sweden.

Men of the Coldstrean Guards recently came back from Afghanistan. The troops, last minute stand-ins for failed private security, undertook their duties with humour and efficiency.

Band of the Royal Marines and a young recruit.

Olympic Rings and British supporters. Earlier there was a marriage proposal in front of them.

(Copyright © text & photographs Tim Koch)