World Championships Videos

Below is the 1000m World Championship Premier Open Final (recap).  It’s a nice video because you can watch the entire race and see how it all unfolded.  It’s interesting for me to watch it and compare with the memories I have of the race.  First the Philippines jumps out to a huge lead which I remember (you don’t have to be looking over to know when a team gets that far ahead).  I remember “feeling” and hearing the Americans right beside us but had no clue where we stood relative to anyone else.  I also distinctly remember Jeff (our steersman) telling us “The Philippines are coming back to us” which you see clearly in the video and at that point I think the crew knew we were in a battle for the medals.

After about 350m you will see the Slovaks take full advantage of Lane 1 and take a lead and were not challenged from then on.  I didn’t realize how well positioned we were as we came through 500m in medal position.  The 3rd 250m we seemed to lose a bit of ground but I don’t remember it being poor; probably the rest of the field made a move.  Then the last 250m we had a great finish (which was our trademark all regatta) to overtake the Philippines but unfortunately the Germans were waiting and biding their time and had an even better finish to steal the bronze.

The lineup with Lane 1 closest to the camera:

  1. Slovak Republic
  2. Canada
  3. USA
  4. Philippines
  5. Germany
  6. Russia

Compare that video with this one of the blur that is the 200m race (recap).  The Philippines and China completely destroy the field with their really high stroke rates.  The shallow course favoured the lighter crews with high rates for the shorter distances; even in deep water those two crews would have been untouchable but the race would have been much tighter.

The lineup with Lane 1 closest to the camera:

  1. Czech Republic
  2. Slovak Republic
  3. Philippines
  4. Germany
  5. China
  6. Canada