The boys stepped up big time today and we had a series of great races culminating with a 4th place finish in the Grand Final less than half a second from silver. The 2nd-5th place teams all came to the line right together. We battled down the course the whole way with the USA who were the defending champions.
The race schedule forced us to have to race 4 times in the space of 5 hours which was a major challenge, but the crew keeps getting better each time we get on the water so it didn’t hurt us too much to race the extra time.
Compared to the last worlds in 2007 the level of competition is significantly stronger. Before our semi-final I thought to myself that in Australia this could have been the final line-up. So even though we only placed one position higher than two years ago we have made a major step forward. The guys from the East have meshed really well with us Western boys and brought the extra power that we’d lacked at times in the past.
Even though we’ve had two fourth-place finishes we’re super upbeat about how things are progressing and are looking forward to attacking the 200m distance in both Mixed and Open tomorrow. We had some very good starts today so we’re in good shape for the shorter all-out sprints.
For those more interested in the cooking-show updates, as I write this Catherine has just finished whipping up a great smelling stir fry with our sweet hotplate setup. And we’ve got a hot whole roasted chicken from Tesco courtesy of Jonathan so we’re going to eat like kings tonight.
Oh my! Congratulations! It’s great to know that, even when it’s a “fast heat”, you guys BRING IT.
Also, very happy i am to see a pic of seester (in a cute bandana). I love your ability to work with what you have for cooking arrangements. It’s amazing what we don’t absolutely NEED.