Mahé's Mail- A quick review of a great week

by Mahé Drysdale on 28 Aug 2006 I have to apologise for my lack of emails but hard with the time constraints and lack of internet access.

Now am pretty flat tack and have lots to explain so I will give you a very quick run down of what has happened over the last few days then will come back for a more in depth view later.

Thanks for all the great support from people here and through all the emails, you don’t know how much it helps.

Firstly Semi Finals. The water was rough and a strong tail wind made it tricky. I got through in first place after Hacker led most of the way then caught a crab in the closing stages giving me a comfortable win. The final was almost a dream final with all the top Scullers making it through, including the current Olympic Champion, World Champion, a former world champion along with this years world cup winner. (Includes the top five from last year’s worlds).

The men’s pair and woman’s double also won their semis and the woman’s pair had already made it through to the final via a repechage. Duncan Grant topped off the charge making it through comfortably from his semi to get 6 of the 8 crews at worlds in A Finals.

So was a big day starting Saturday and Duncan started it off well with a Bronze medal. I was up next! it was an absolutely cracking race with Hacker taking it too me, I lead for 2 strokes one at the 100M mark to go and the other as we crossed the line (not great for the nerves), ended in a time of 6:35.4 (0.09sec ahead of Hacker) which was another 4 seconds off my personal best and set a new World Best time beating the time Hacker previously held by about a second.

The rest of the day saw a great medal haul with silvers to the men’s and woman’s pairs and bronze to the woman’s double. The Men’s straight four finished 3rd in the B Final after a very hard few days (explain later) to end the day with our biggest ever medal haul from a world championships.

Sunday just got better as the woman’s eight came down for a very good first place in the B final (7th overall) and the men’s coxed four finishing the day with our third bronze medal and 6 medals from 8 crews and all crews making A finals winning a medal. (1 Gold, 2 Silvers, 3 Bronze)

Well that’s the brief of it, will come back in next few days with more in-depth report.

Mahé