Rowing GOLD In Munich

Not going to lie, we are pretty pumped and pretty tired… and let me tell you Lesley was “feeling speed” today.

With a slight head wind, the race was about 20seconds longer than our time in Lucerne, working out to an extra 15 strokes, and we made every one of them count.

Our goal today was to set the tone and pace for the middle 1000m of the race, and we were able to open up our lead by clear water over the Romanians and the rest of the field.

The challenge with this strategy is holding onto it going into the final 500m.

We knew we had a good sprint but the effort in the first part of the race showed when the other crews started to move back on us in that final stretch.

The neat thing is that 6 out of the 9 of us (including Lesley) won their first ever World Cup gold today.

How sweet a moment it is!?!So now this we go back to London, ON to train our butts off for the final 6 weeks until the Olympic Final.

This World Cup is a great confidence boost but we know that all other countries will be stepping up their games and that the Olympic regatta will be an even bigger performance to look forward to.

I forgot to mention before but Germany has an enormous rowing fan base. Every time I’m in Munich or even Lucerne, there are gentlemen following rowers around, collecting autographs and photos.

Many have gone through great lengths to print out photos of athletes from online profiles, Facebook, you name it, and  others have been collecting since the 1948 Games!

They really make you feel like a pro. As rowers we tend to fly under the radar so often it is kind of nice to have a stranger ask for my autograph.