It was no surprise given Shark’s record: Beijing is his sixth Olympics, he’s bagged three Olympic gold nuggets since Seoul ’88 and he’s highly revered by not only his fellow rowers, but plenty of other Aussie athletes in the team.

The function was good fun; Natalie Bassingthwaite belted out the National Anthem, Princess Mary and Prince “Aussie Freddie” Frederick of Denmark were mingling, and we got to mix some Olympic stories with the rest of the Aussie team, as well as sharing news on what’s been happening back in Oz.

Earlier in the day, I met PM Kevin Rudd and his wife Therese at the official Australian flag-raising ceremony inside the Olympic village. Kevin ’07 chatted to the rowers for quite a while, but unfortunately I had to dash off for some post-training re-fueling before I could ask him about his time as a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Beijing in the late 1980’s.

Eating and drinking schedules have been really important, though, as the humidity has been overbearing on some days. For some of our training sessions, we’ve been having ice-baths before rowing, and we’ve even shortened some sessions because of the intensity of the Beijing heat. Ice-baths and Powerade slushies have been a saviour!

The rowing course is awesome. It’s huge! 10 lanes wide! One downside, though, is that the heat haze often reduces visibility down to about 500 metres. And there are volunteers everywhere, always ready to help. It seems if you miss throwing some rubbish in the bin, there’s someone there before you’ve got time to pick it up.

We’re all looking forward to the Opening Ceremony tonight – at 8.08pm on 08/08/08. Easy to remember! We’ve learnt that eight is considered a lucky number in China, and many Asian cultures, as it sounds similar to the word “prosper” or “wealth”. In fact, people will pay a premium for a telephone number with many 8s, or an address or car license plate with that number.

Our first heat is on Sunday afternoon at 5.40pm CST, which is 7.40pm AEST. Can’t wait! Hope you can watch!

Roaring Hot

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I’m hoping to see a lot of superstar athletes cutting around the village, especially Australian athletes like Cadel Evans, Stuart O’Grady and Clint Robinson.

I’m particularly hoping to meet one of my sporting heroes, Steve Waugh, and chat about big-event preparations. In a huge blessing, “Tugga” is rowing’s Olympic Athlete Liason Officer. These are the experienced, role model, sporting heros that athletes are meant to be able to use for advice and as a sounding board.

The other two liaison officers are Wallabies great John Eales – will be keen to talk Bledisloe Cup! – and Kate Allen (nee Slater) of rowing fame, who won Olympic gold in the women’s pair in Atlanta, 1996.

We have done several racing pieces in Penrith on the Sydney Olympic course. It’s been great trying to pull all our training together to see how we’re moving at race pace now. We’ve been trying some different ways of starting and are using the Sydney International Regatta Centre as a mirror copy of the Beijing course to complete our preparations.

The whole team is staying together out at Penrith and having all the crews in one spot really creates a good team vibe and you can start to feel the enormity of having qualified a full compliment of crews for the Olympics. Every crew’s been doing their practice racing pieces and it really brings home that it’s not long until race day in Beijing.

We’re also starting to feel human again after completing our big-load sessions, and some of us have actually got some feeling back in the legs. The heats, which start for us two days after the Opening Ceremony, are only 10 days away and I can’t think of a time in my rowing career that I’ve felt fitter and more physically capable to handle a flat out sprint like the eights race is.

There’s been a fair bit of media attention around James (Tomkins) with this trip being his sixth Olympics and the speculation that he’s one of the short-priced favourites to carry the Australian flag at the Opening Ceremony. You probably couldn’t get a bookie to take your money.

If he does become the flag bearer, I’m sure it would be a huge honour for him, and it would be very, very cool to have one of my crew mates leading the Australian Olympic Team into the Opening Ceremony.

Thanks to all those who have sent good luck and best wishes notes.

I feel sorry for my family and friends who may have noticed that I’ve gone a bit quiet over the last week or so. Its got to that time where I’m spending most, if not all, of my thoughts and day dreams on how I’m going to row in the heats. This is the time during my preparation that my focus starts to narrow and I visualise myself executing my job the best I can.

I’ll next write from the Olympic village, and let you all know how the vibe is over there.

We’ve been on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland for about a week, and as if being a Cockroach in the heart of Cane Toad territory when Queensland snuck home over NSW in the State of Origin decider last week wasn’t tough enough, training has involved long, draining sessions in “artificial” heat and humidity.

Even Queensland (which has actually been rainy one day, drizzling the next) can’t naturally produce the conditions we’re expecting to encounter in Beijing next month, so Richo and Ricey have been indulging in a bit of climate change.

This involves dressing in full lycra suits, with beanies and punching out 45-minute sessions on the ergs (rowing machines) while heaters warm the room to Beijing-like levels. They’re lung-busting workouts (that give you a very itchy head), but necessary as part of our aclimation plan.

I lost 3 kilograms during one of these sessions on Monday, so proper re-hydration and re-fuelling is crucial. We’re lucky to have a senior AIS sports dietitian with us in camp, Gary Slater, who co-ordinates our post-training recovery. This normally includes lots of bananas, protein shakes, re-hydration salts and other gastrolytes, and then plenty of sleep!

The best meal we’ve had in camp, though, was when we were kindly invited to have dinner at cox Marty Rabjohn’s parents house in Mooloolaba. Even though their son might not be able to cut loose at meal time, Di and Ian were well prepared for his larger crewmates with a fantastic BBQ; although not entirely Queensland-style as the XXXX wasn’t flowing freely.

On the water, we’re back rowing as a full eight now after a period of splitting into two 4s to work on some technical drills. We’re feeling pretty fast, and we’ve also been spending a bit of time focussing on our race strategy for Beijing.

This means the whole crew being totally in tune with Marty’s calls, and knowing at what point during the 2000 metres we’ll boost our stroke rating and stamp our authority on the race. A key part of this preparation is actually done on dry land when we perform visualisation and imagery exercises, often three times a week now.

The crew have thankfully remained healthy and just about injury-free while in Queensland, so there haven’t been many disruptions to combinations. Only Jeremy Stevenson has struggled with a bit of a virus, but perhaps that’s not too surprising – being a West Australian, he’s a long way from home!

The only other distraction is Pamela Anderson, who isn’t too far away on the Gold Coast. My room-mates, Sam Loch and Sam Conrad, are threatening to raid the Big Brother house when we get a rare day off at the end of the week.

The guys got a massive lift after three more Aussie boats qualified for Beijing at a regatta in Poland last month.

Pippa Savage won the women’s single scull, Catriona Sens and Sonia Mills finished second in the final of the double sculls, while the men’s four pulled off a great win after a last-minute crew change.

Matt Ryan woke up with a virus on the morning of the race, but Terrence Alfred stepped up and with Francis Hegerty, Cameron McKenzie-McHarg and James Marburg, bagged a memorable victory.

Australia has now qualified crews for Beijing in all 14 classes for the first time in Olympic rowing competition.

Only one other nation, Germany, has achieved the same feat, qualifying all of its 14 crews at Atlanta in 1996.

James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8. You can receive emails of James’ column by signing up here.

The instructions from Richo (coach) and Ricey (conditioner) was to relax and re-charge the batteries (or solar panel otherwise known as a receding hairline in my case), but I kept pretty busy in Sydney catching up with people, from grandparents to employers to medics.

One thing I have learnt from my time training full-time at the AIS since 2006 is that when I do get the opportunity to head back home, I feel much more refreshed after spending time with family and mates than knocking out hours in front of the TV or sleeping.

There was no shortage of interrogations and long lines of questioning about our World Cup performance in Luzern when we finished a disappointing fourth. In the end, I reckon I had the answer well rehearsed.

The constant probing really forces you to intensely analyse your performance. It rams home the importance of being transparent and genuine with yourself and your crewmates. Anyone can see straight through smoke and mirrors.

Anyway, I’ve certainly arrived back in Canberra totally ready for the last 6 weeks of our campaign before the Beijing Olympics kick off.

We’ve more or less got back into the old routine, with all the medics and physios that have been managing us all season beating us back into shape after the heavy training cycle we had in Europe amongst the two World Cup events.

One change over the past week has been Richo’s call to split the eight up into two fours. At the moment, the middle four of the eight is in one of the fours and the stern and bow end of the eight in another four.

It gives us a break from rowing the big boat, and mixes up our schedule in case we were getting a little too comfortable and into too much of a routine rowing the eight.

The fours are more sensitive to row so you become more aware of all the small movements that may affect the boat. It’s great, direct feedback on your technique when the boat tips and drops.

It also gives our coxswain, Marty, a break. Not that he wants one; he gets withdrawal symptoms when we don’t row the eight.

What none of us will miss are the mid-winter temperatures of Canberra.

Sports bottles full of hot water and AIS ID cards have been necessary to scrape the ice off windscreens before driving down to the boat sheds in the mornings.

Bizarrely, one of the iciest parts of Canberra is indoors – the recovery pool in the state-of-the-art recovery centre.

The pool is usually set at 11-14 degrees and we alternate between the hot water spa and the cold water plunge pool to aid our recovery.

The regime is meant to be at least equal time in both, such as 2 minutes in the hot water, then 2 minutes in the cold water over four cycles to make a total of 8 minutes in each.

Doctor Shona Halson, the Senior Recovery Physiologist (or Recovery Centre Madam) instructs us on differing protocols, depending on what training we’ve had that day, as well as the training we’ve got scheduled the following day.

The icy cold water is meant to reduce inflammation and soreness, much like icing an injury, and the contrasting heat generates blood flow to the muscles, flushing out lactic acid riddled blood.

This also has the affect of firing the central nervous system. My body language and expression in the photo shows how impressed I am with all this science behind dunking my body into an icy plunge pool, but if it’s going to help me recover from the day’s training so I can train harder tomorrow, then it’s all worth the goose bumps and hard nipples.

This week we’re heading north to warmer climes – Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. We’ll be using the next three weeks up there to help our acclimatisation to the heat and humidity expected in Beijing.

Apparently the physiologists have been developing some strategies to aid this process. They haven’t detailed them to us yet, which probably means bad news such as training in long sleeve thermals.

Even worse will be if the Maroons knock over the Blues in the Origin III decider. ‘Carn the BLUES!

This is my first entry since the Luzern World Cup.

Regret and disappointment are the first emotions I felt after the final in Luzern, where we placed fourth.

I regretted the missed opportunity to, firstly impose psychological pressure on our opposition that will be in Beijing, and secondly to win a race at, probably, the greatest natural (opposed to man-made) race course in the world.

There’s clearly no need to explain my emotions of disappointment.

Some people I’ve spoken to since the race have tried to butter me up by saying that fourth isn’t a bad result. I can appreciate their perspective…and their desire to put me in a better mood…but I’m most disappointed that the result isn’t reflective of what we were capable of achieving as a crew at this point of our preparation.

We won our heat on the Friday by executing our plan for that row. We raced out hard and were probably only a few feet in the lead, but we were comfortable enough in our rhythm and our position to keep racing in that position until the second half of the race.

Moving through the 1000m mark, Marty Rabjohns (our cox) called for us to push ahead and we moved out to about half a length’s lead over Great Britain & Germany and stayed at this margin until the finish. This was a solid heat row and I was happy that I had a race under my belt now after being sick in Munich.

In their heat, the Canadians beat China comfortably with a quick time of 5m:25s. They were clearly making a statement about their arrival on the international racing program. This definitely created a distraction for us in our lead-up to the final.

There were no real surprises in the qualifiers for the final based on the results in Munich. China, Great Britain, Germany and Poland qualified through the repechage.

The French and Dutch raced the B Final and will be racing for the final qualification spot in two weeks at the wildcard races in Poland.

Throughout the weekend we watched the boys we’ve trained with all season competing in the coxless fours event (made famous in Australia by the Awesome Foursome) and after they stayed in Canberra training rather than race in Munich, everyone was keen to see how they raced as a new combination.

They kicked arse. They won their heat, semi-final and final. A comprehensive, confidence-building weekend of racing before they chase an Olympics berth in Poland.

It was inspirational to watch. I think our crew can learn from the way they’ve gelled as a crew as well as the way they raced – taking no prisoners and no mercy all the way down the course. They didn’t give the other crews a chance.

Our final was not indicative of what we are capable of doing over 2000m. It was a poor representation and we all hung our heads in shame after the race.

Sport is like that. You put all your abilities out there to be evaluated by all and there’s no hiding when you fall short.

We didn’t race out well from the start and after that struggled to get into a racing rhythm that could race down the opposition. We focused on the Canadians too much.

We learnt a lot about the way we race and our opposition. This is reason we fly over to Europe, to see where we stand at this point, 8 weeks out from the Olympics and to learn how we race as a, relatively, new crew. This is all part of the planning process that’s required for the event that culminates four years of preparation.

We’re now back in Varese, Italy and have spent the last week getting smacked around by our coach.

We’re back into voluminous training loads, like yesterday where our first rowing session was 4 x 15mins of rate changes at full pressure and today we did a three-and-a-half hour bike ride.

No doubt there’s going to be a fair bit of pain over the next few weeks, but none of it can hurt like racing poorly did.

The result in Luzern can guarantee there’s no hubris that creeps into our training.

James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8. You can receive emails of James’ column by signing up here.

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Read last week’s installment of the diary

The scenic route, via the famous 800-year-old San Gotthard Pass connecting the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland to the northern German-speaking part, took us to the town of Lucerne, the venue for our next World Cup assignment.

Our camp in Varese was taxing, rainy, and not without a minor misadventure.

On a rare day when the weather cleared and cross-training was scheduled, we met up with ex-Olympic lightweight rower, now professional cyclist, Cameron Wurf. He lives and trains in the area, and our first assignment was to cycle up Campo Dei Fiori. For a bunch of heavyweight rowers, a solid hill climb like this was slow going but bloody good for the heart and legs.

After a cold descent, we headed over to Laveno on Lago di Maggiore, checked out the scenery flashing past and then headed for home. At least we thought we were.

The cycle was meant to be around three-and-a-half hours. The trip back from Laveno was meant to be approximately 60 minutes, but when we’d been cycling for 90 and Wurfy didn’t recognise any of the surrounding scenery, we started to get a bit edgy (despite the amazing countryside).

Just as we were running low on water and calories, we finally saw our hotel on the horizon after five-and-a-half hours in the saddle. The legs were moving slow at that stage but we’d pumped plenty of aerobic volume into our lungs.

Training on the water in the rain was intriguing. On some occasions, the last thing you wanted to do after warming up and stretching in a dry, warm boat shed was to step out into the rain. However, the crew handled it well and there was a lot of positive chat: from “c’mon boys let’s get into it” to the more direct and unambiguous “harden the f*%k up”. Anyway, we race in the rain, so we train in the rain.

That’s one of the great things about being in a crew the size of the Eight. Others are there to fire you up when you’re having an off day, or lacking motivation and sometimes you’re there to give others a motivational kick-start when they’re struggling.

The lake was actually flattened out a bit post-rain, which was ideal for our training. A mirror-like lake allows us to feel the way the boat is responding to our oar work and the way each other is applying power. It’s much more difficult to feel these nuances when the wind blows and the water is chopped up. That is why a lot of rowers train during ridiculously early hours.

We were happy with our preparation in Italy, doing some more specific race preparation during our sessions and achieving some of our targets over set distances. Racing preparation is a wobbly juggling act for the coaches due to the physical intensity of the work. High intensity work fatigues different athletes in different ways and this is no more evident than in the Eight, where there are so many differing body types. We’ll discover the fruits of our lactic labour in racing this weekend.

The whole Australian Rowing Team is now together in Lucerne, with a few crews arriving last weekend after staying in Australia to keep training rather than racing in the 1st World Cup event in Munich. It’s great to have absolutely everybody here; it really gives us all strength and the team is so big that we can draw inspiration and confidence from the performance of others.

It’s also great to see some new faces and hear news, rowing gossip and football scores from back home. Our manager, Ray “Razor” Ebert keeps us VERY up to date with the AFL and NRL scores (he’s from Briz-Vegas) and unfortunately keeps reminding me how badly the Bunnies are doing. At least the ‘Tahs are keeping my spirits elevated for another week.

The teams were starting to arrive at the course today, with the bigger teams entering almost every boat class. The Chinese are flooding the boat park, with more than one entry in some events, as they still haven’t finalised some selections, and the Canadians are in attendance after their notable absence from the Munich World Cup.

The Canadian men’s Eight were World Champions in 2007 and we are looking to see how our performance compares to the benchmark crew.

Heats start on Friday, with our event starting at 2:12pm Central European Time (10.12pm AEST on Friday). The results can be viewed on www.worldrowing.com and the racing can be watched live on www.wcsn.com.

James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8. You can receive emails of James’ column by signing up here.

For a bit of background, Sam (or Spock as he’s known around the boat shed) started rowing at school in 1996 and upon completing his high school studies, headed to the United States for four years of study at Princeton University, an Ivy League school in New Jersey. He excelled in their rowing program, stroking their senior (Varsity) crew to many victories. He returned to Australia in mid-2006 and earned an AIS scholarship in October of that year, giving him the brief, probationary opportunity to impress the Australian coaches.

Spock and I were put in a coxless pair for that season and later both won selection in the Australian coxless four. This year we were again put in a pair and improved our ranking in the Australian selection trials which eventually led to selection in the men’s eight. We’ve spent a lot of hours training together, discussing strategies, technical nuances of the pair and how to overcome our poorer performances of 2007.

Sam Loch

His determination and doggedness towards training is probably second to none of all the athletes I’ve worked with over the years. He looks after his body with everything he does. Everything that goes in, or near, his body serves some functional purpose that will assist in making him a better oarsman. He is disciplined, focussed and quietly determined to prove, or disprove, peoples opinions of him and validate the strong sense of self belief he has in himself.

I have thoroughly enjoyed partnering with him over the past two seasons and I’m extremely proud of what we’ve achieved together to date.

———————————————————————————– 

JC: What experience do you think you’ve been able to bring from the Princeton training program to the Australian team?

SL: In the wintry north-east corner of the USA, rowing is ruled out for 6 months of the year because the lakes are frozen. Therefore, the ability to have a certain disregard for boredom in the undertaking of grossly extended periods of cross training.

JC: How long is a grossly extended period of cross training in the US College system? What are the kind of sessions you guys did in the winter in order to be rowing fit when you couldn’t actually row?

SL: During the winter when the lake’s frozen, we would do sessions that were as long as 2 hours on the rowing machine, which is quite a long time on that particular apparatus. Or on the occasion when the crew was disbanded for disciplinary infractions (not uncommon with college students), we would abuse our access to the communal campus gymnasium and do cardiovascular training on various machines such as stationary bikes, elliptical machines, stair masters, and treadmills for upwards of 3-4 hours.

An obvious difference between the two training systems is the blatant disregard for technical prowess during anything that isn’t considered a timed training piece. For instance, my first coach at Princeton, Greg Hughes (who is also a US National Team coach), insisted the rowing stroke was like a floating leg-press, which is a concept you wouldn’t hear many Aussie coaches promoting (due to their more rigid technical focus), but a concept I still, very much, believe in.

JC: What are some of the ergo protocols when you couldn’t row on the water that would be encouraging this BRUTAL application of power?

SL: Most of the pieces were over specific distances as fast as you could go. Always as fast as you could go. This created an environment of ongoing and unrelenting competitiveness, mano-e-mano.

JC: Can you please run thru the multitude of nick names you’ve received this tour?

SL: Brooks, Brooks Bikram, Bobby Bikram (technically from a prior tour), most recently ‘Tankles’, ‘Cankles’, Hop-a-long, Geisha, self-annointed Jean Claude Van Damme, when clad only in underpants…Derps Van Damme.

JC: Could you please try and explain one of these nicknames?

SL: Apparently Brooks is in reference to a Shawshank Redemption character who due to his extended period of incarceration is, upon release, incapable of dealing with the outside world. This is relatively similar in many regards to my extended period of time in various institutions… boarding school, college in US, and the Australian Institute of Sport. All the other nicknames are references to my penchant for yoga or my recent almost simultaneously spraining of both left and right ankles.

JC: So, how long have you been institutionalised for in total?

SL: Going on 14 years.

JC: How long do you intend to be institutionalised for?

SL: For as long as possible ideally. So the likely options are either the armed forces, prison or a mental health facility.

JC: What is your attraction to being institutionalised?

SL: Structure, integrated time organisation and little to no interaction with civilians.

JC: How did you feel about the 8’s gold-medal performance at the 1st World Cup event in Munich recently?

SL: It’s quite exciting given that we were able to perform reasonably well relative to some of our competition that will be in the Olympics – especially given the early phase of our preparation and that we were without our full compliment of oarsmen.

JC: You mentioned that the crew is in its early phase of preparation. What are you’re expectations from the next phase of preparation?

SL: In many aspects we will continue with some of the same stuff we’ve done to date. But our coach, Richo and our physiologist, Tony Rice, will refine both our technical prowess and physical capabilities, respectively.

JC: What assumptions - rightly or wrongly – did you make about coming into the Australian system after four years overseas?

SL: I correctly assumed it wouldn’t be easy to re-integrate myself into Australian rowing, particularly at the elite level given that when I left Australia I was marginally overweight and essentially a schoolboy.

JC: Can you please elaborate on “marginally overweight”?

SL: Marginally overweight for a schoolboy, but I thought that during my years abroad I’d become a more capable oarsman with enough determination I’d be able get to where I currently am now.

JC: What do you think enabled you to gain Olympic selection in your second season in the Australian system and your second year in the senior team?

SL: I would say the initial help of Tim McLaren (former UTS Rowing Club Head Coach – now working in California) and the willingness of Richo to have me down at the AIS based on performances in the US. But also the help of a fine pair partner – that’s you mate! - and being able to learn from other fine oarsmen in the squad.

In particular, however, the willingness of my parents to watch me squander an Ivy League education for at least a few years whilst I chase my dreams.

JC: What were you studying at Princeton University?

SL: It was one part the seduction of lovely, nubile co-eds; one part the rigorous enjoyment of lactic threshold training; and three parts the initially unpleasant Ivy League academic standards which later became entirely enjoyable. I majored in Anthropology.

JC: What are you looking forward to after the Olympics?

SL: Enjoying a well earned rest in which time I’ll consume much lager and unadulterated amounts of pizza and chocolate. Soon after I’ll re-commence training, but I may also have to gain employment, dammit.

James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8. You can receive emails of James’ column by signing up here.

Many of you highly intelligent and in tune Roar readers may already know that the Australian Eight raced the weekend just passed, and won.

This is pretty, no, very exciting for our debut. What wasn’t exciting was that I had to sit on the bench whilst my crew mates took on the countries that turned out to race.

We trained relatively hard compared to the usual taper coming into International Regattas and after long-haul flights upon our arrival in Munich.

This suppresses everyone’s immune system and I became the proud host of a virus – I like to think of it as a super virus – that knocked me for six. Despite me trying to convince the coach, and myself, that I was ok to race, I was ruled out by the team doctor for the heats.

I was ambitiously hopeful that I’d be okay for the final. This was shattered when I attempted an ergo-fitness test the evening before the final and my heart rate went ballistic at an intensity that I’d normally be able to hold for close to an hour.

I must thank Karsten Fosterling for filling in for me with such grace and success, not withstanding I was insanely jealous of him.

The crew raced the final with aplomb and won the Munich World Cup.

The major threats in the race were expected to be Great Britain (last year’s World Championship Bronze Medallists) and China, who won the two heats.

The Australian Eight, despite it not being their tactic, raced out to an early lead and had half a length (which is quite a big margin in men’s Eights rowing) by the 500 metre mark (quarter distance).

The Chinese were in second and the Brits very close behind them.

By the 1000m mark, the Aussie crew were at almost one length lead. The Poms moved through the Chinese and started to close in on the Aussies. At 500m, the Aussies only had about one-third of a length lead. This is when the crew pushed against the attack by Great Britain and was able to hold them off until the finish line.

Interestingly, the French and Croatian Eights qualified for the final in Munich and these two countries are yet to qualify for the Olympics.

They will be competing in the Wild Card race for the one spot available in June. It was good to see what they are capable of at this stage as we will probably be racing one of these countries during the Olympic regatta.

The crew and coach have been very philosophical about the win in Munich, commenting how we would all trade the win in Munich for the right coloured medal in China. This means that this result is just a vindication of the training and technical focuses we’ve been concentrating on since the crew’s selection and that we have to keep training, keep striving and maintain our major goal of our best performance in Beijing.

Citius Altius fortius, faster higher stronger … the Olympic Motto.

The Women’s Eight also won their race, which made it a historical day for Australian rowing as it was the first time both crews have won at the same international event.

For those of you that haven’t been able to sleep at night since the news of my convalescence, you can rest easy now as I was back in the boat this morning for our first row at our European base camp in Varese, Northern Italy.

I don’t think I stopped smiling all training session.

More of James’s photos from the Olympic trail

Sam Loch with a quick hit of authentico Italian life before training revs up
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The crew preparing the oars and boat for training in Varese. (L-R: Stephen Stewart, Dave Dennis, Me, Sam Loch. Remaining crew member in background)

You can read the previous blogs by James Chapman here.

Despite the excitement and sentimentality of rowing on the 1972 Olympic Rowing Course, a 20km session on a 2km course means turning the boat around every seven minutes for 90 minutes. It can make you dizzy!

James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8.

The other part of the mid-week training circus is trying to navigate through the hundreds of boats on the water at the same time. It seems every country wants to train at the same time, and this means every boat class, from single sculls to eights, jockeying for lane space to train in. The course becomes a washing machine of bouncing boats, splashing oars and linguists hurling abuse in their native tongue, gesticulating wildly… not too dissimilar from driving in Sydney really. It’s all part of the game.

We are 48 hours away from our first international race as a crew and the wait is starting to show. Different athletes prepare for raceday differently and the Australian eight is no different. Some of the guys have watched close to 20 episodes of The Sopranos, others are immersed in books while the youngest, Jeremy Stevenson, and the eldest, James Tomkins, are both playing the same computer game on their laptops. It’s great to see that the crew mates are relating, despite a 21-year age differential.

For distraction and relaxation, I’m trying to write emails to friends and read a book that my Uncle Peter gave me. However, I also set aside some time to think about what my job is come race-time. While I try not to over-analyse my role that can lead to unnecessary tension, I try to calmly visualise my raceday preparations and execution.

There are 10 eights entered in this first World Cup in Munich. Five of those – Great Britain, China, Poland, Germany and Australia – have qualified for the Olympics, and the other five – Italy, France, Netherlands, Croatia and Switzerland – are aiming to snare the one Beijing Olympics wild-card spot available in June at the third World Cup.

The two countries not here, and probably considered the two favourites for Beijing, are USA and current world champions Canada. They don’t tend to race in Europe until the Lucerne regatta.

We are looking to answer a lot of questions in our first hit-out on Friday. The biggest question is: are we on track for Beijing? This doesn’t mean we have to win here in Munich, but we want to know that the technical and physical hours that we’ve logged so far are laying down the foundations for the desired result in China. We are training heavily through this week, with the intention of no physical taper leading into the races. This is geared towards our long-term, “big-picture” preparation. We have heats on Friday, repechage on Saturday and finals on Sunday.

We’ve also been keeping up our stretching, mobility and core-strength sessions as you can see from the photos. We do what we can, even if it means using the hotel hallway. I think some of the other hotel guests think we’re an interpretive dance troupe, but we know what’s important… even if it attracts plenty of odd stares!

Talking of bizarre, some of the guys were a bit miffed by the lunch served at the rowing course today – a zucchini and faux-chicken curry. The Germans are great at running events like major international rowing regattas, but the consensus was that when it comes to re-fuelling, they should stick to what they do best: pork, sauerkraut and beer swilling from ridiculously over-sized beer mugs (that we can only watch others consume).

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James Chapman’s Photos
James Tomkins & Tony Rice (physiologist/scientist) enjoying latte between sessions in Dachau

Dave Dennis (bow seat) in mid-back arch

Me working my core…doing ‘hundreds’…apparently a great exercise if I ever have to give birth

Tom Laurich doing ‘hundreds’.

Dave Dennis – another exercise, not sure what its called…we call it the Dave Foster

Me passing time doing emails

The Munich rowing course…with massive 250 metre concrete stand…perfect for a 1972 German hosted Olympic games

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James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8.

Rowing’s World Cup regattas do not translate into significant four-year events like the Football World Cup or Rugby World Cup (or even the Rugby League World Cup, for that matter). There are three regattas held each year, with the points accumulated at each of these events tallied to determine the World Cup winner. Canada is the reigning World Cup men’s eight champion after meets in Linz, Amsterdam and Lucerne last year.

Unfortunately, there is little to zero chance we can win the points tally as we’re only competing at the first two stages of the World Cups – Munich (8-11 May) and Lucerne (30 May – 1 June). However, it suits our preparation – with Beijing the biggest fish to fry – to jet back to Australia in June to knuckle down to some selective training, rather than taper and peak again for the third of the World Cups in Poznan, Poland (20-22 June).

We completed preparations in Canberra with some intense race work, against the clock only, and against the fresh new winter that has dropped in on the nation’s capital over the last week – a timely reminder as to why Europe is a great idea. We did two race pieces this morning over 1500 metres (the course on Lake Burley-Griffin is only 1800m; the Olympic distance is 2000m) and the temperature at day break was a tightening -1 degrees.

By tightening, I mean that in the third minute of race work when your quads and glutes are screaming for fresh blood and oxygen, and all you can suck down is air that feels like its been pumped straight from a glacier…that’s tightening. The lungs don’t seem interested in processing such bitterly cold breathes.

Nonetheless, the race sets were solid, not spectacular, and we learned a fair bit from them. With the training load heavy recently, the residual fatigue is going to affect performance, but a series of race work sessions has the guys well-prepared and up-beat for our international debut as a crew in just nine days time.

Concentration levels have been revved up and the feeling is that now we’re down to double-digit days before Beijing kicks off, we can get even faster. After focussing on some technical improvements with the coaching staff, lead by Brian “Richo” Richardson, there’s definitely a buzz, from cox to bowman, when we’ve got the boat at full tilt. The guys are now itching to be put under the pump against some of our Olympic rivals in Europe.

Off the water, we also got a good buzz out of some recent TV coverage. Last Tuesday, the ABC’s 7.30 Report put together a story on the men’s eight, with a firm focus on James Tomkins’s outlook as he prepares for a phenomenal 6th Olympics. You can watch the story below:

Then last Sunday, another story on James and the crew was broadcast on Wide World of Sports on Channel 9. Tim Sheridan spent a few days with us, and it was a nice insight into our preparations in Canberra. I’ll corner James Tomkins for a chat on The Roar soon, but for now, let me introduce another crewmate.

Tom Laurich is one of the big boppas of the crew, walking at 200cm tall (six ft seven) and weighing a svelte 100 kilograms neat. He’s from Avalon in Sydney, which makes him a very big beach bum (size-wise, at least).

With his build, he’s one of the power mongers in the boat, a prime mover, lifting big weights and monstering ergos. He’s currently sitting in the 4 seat, the middle of the boat, also known as the engine room. He’s bloody good at throwing chat during training sessions and races, firing all those up around him and getting the vibe up when its getting tough.

Here’s Tom below in the strength and conditioning facility at the AIS in Canberra. He’s doing one-legged leg presses, shooting the mechanism up in the air at speed, quite similar to the leg speed in the boat.

What Tom possesses in rowing talent and chat, his wife Alison possesses in cooking talent and hospitality. Ali, also known as “Sweet Wife” has, at some stage, hosted all of us for dinner (more fuel) and also provided baked goods on birthdays. She earns her nickname as Tom has done well.

Below is Sam Loch doing one of the many things he does to a high standard, utilising his musculature. This photo’s just a teaser for the admirers. I’ll introduce him soon.

Next, I’ll be writing from Germany.

All the best,

Chappos

I wouldn’t have believed it six months ago. I wouldn’t have ten years ago, when first I started rowing after leaving high school. But now I believe it.

We’re into the last 20 days of training at the Australian Institute of Sport for this campaign, before we depart for our European hit-outs.

We’re trying to make ourselves the most prepared we can be prior to landing in China. We’re including cross-training exercises such as touch football (for co-ordination), cycling (for aerobic conditioning), and we’re even doing some Russian Martial Arts exercises for mobility and flexibility.

If you were going to compete at the Olympics, you would want to know you’ve covered everything off so that you have the best chance of winning. I want to know I’ve done as much as I can when I’m representing my country.

Right now we’re in Canberra, until Saturday 3rd May – in the Capital that’s getting increasingly cold, which means increasingly more layers of Lycra for on-water training sessions.

Despite the chill, it’s a great lake to train on, the Burley-Griffin.

It’s typically a flat lake (like most stretches of water), but it isn’t too windy, which is ideal for 24km rows.

When we get to our basecamp in Europe, we’ll row more and cross-train less. Alas, we don’t have access to the same facilities we have here in Canberra.

I should also introduce myself. My name is James Chapman and I’m 28 years old. I’ve been rowing since high school and made my first Senior National Team in 2003.

I compete in pairs, fours and eights, but once national selection is finalised, we only compete in one event because of the physical demands of even one race.

I’m from Sydney, born and raised, and have been training out of the AIS in Canberra for 2 years since I was selected in the Australian Eight for the 2006 World Championships.

I’m currently rowing in the 3 seat of the Eight (the seats are numbered 1-8, from the bow of the boat). We will trial several different combinations before Beijing in order to determine the fastest possible line-up.

I’ll introduce other members of the crew as we get closer to the Olympics.

Our spirit and enthusiasm for the Olympics was ignited last night whilst attending a buffet dinner hosted by the Chinese Ambassador, Zhang Junsai.

There were Chinese dignitaries, John Coates (AOC), Members of Parliament and others involved in the Olympic Movement. There was a smattering of athletes, swimmers, gymmies and rowers and uncharacteristically for these functions, enough food to re-fuel, since we just finished training in the weights room.

It was really motivational seeing the buzz around the torch, it gets you excited about competing.

Sometimes it is tough to get fired up for every session, all the time, but events like this are a flaming reminder to why we go through all the hard sessions.

Me, Rob de Castella and Tom Laurich at Wednesday night’s Olympic dinner hosted by the Chinese Ambassador.

Jiang Xiaoyu, left, executive vice-president of the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (or BOCOG), me and Tom Laurich.

** NOTE: The Australian Olympic men’s eight will feature in a story on Wide World of Sports on Channel 9 this Sunday, 27th April from 9.30am. Tune in! **