Paul Rosenquist

Early wake up. Louise has her race 09.06. Absolutely freezing…the sun was not up yet. Louise strolled to the beach half an hour before me. When I got there I was happy to notice that the boiling sea had more or less calmed down. Just a nice swell was left. Amazing what a difference in just a few hours.

Morning of the final…

Louise was jumping around and really nervous for her race. So was I. While Louise was out racing I was restlessly running around on the beach, half looking for ergometers, half checking out the other single rowers and making in good time in interval sprints to the mens room.
Louise came in an hour later and was furious. She totally trusted her GPS after the start and discovered after 2km’s of rowing that she was more than 200 meters of course. The poor thing was trailing way last from then on. Being used to stare at the GPS for more than 2200km’s last summer during her around Sweden trip she kept her trust in the little plastic box. But the difference was that on that trip the were no bouys laid by not so accurate french officials to round.
Louise came in, and I went out. I quickly warmed up and noticed it was nice rowable water. I saw that the start line was crowded at the high end and Peter was lying right there. After the qualification races Peter and I were favourites. But I had a feeling there were some French guys making a plot for a surprise. I had a great start, but after a few strokes one guy that I had overtaken cut across and pushed my stern around. A few hard bangs, my oar bending on his bow, my best french, and I was of again.
When I looked up I saw Peter was struggling to. A felt sorry for him cause he was taking more time to get on again. Focus on rowing was the mantra…many long hard strokes. Boat speed! Feeling. Yep,..I still have it. Soon I was overtaking guys and after 1000m I felt people were weakening. Apart from one bastard that mentioned to have gotten away at least 50 meters. Forget, him! Just make sure I keep following him, stay aligned with the boats behind me and focus. We rounded the second bouy with 3 boats together. WOW, this is racing. But even though the speed was high, I felt under controll. The next stretch was 2700mtrs and I needed to get to business here. So I pushed and got in front. But now I had to steer. I had to stop and look for that damn bouy a few times. Erik and I were steaming along! He tried to push past me and I answered. I noticed he was working. But so was I. And always the waves ans swell to work with as well… a sort of new third dimention. Bouy 3. I turned maybe 2 meters in front and directly managed to get a good surf! I pushed on! This was the plan! But as I was leading I had no clue where bouy 4 was. Must confess that my focus was on getting surf and max boat speed. I managed to get at least to big swells of lead. This was great! When I was comfortable about my lead I started focussing on where the bouy was… when I finally found out where it was I had to adjust a lot! Shit, Erik was right on track!We rounded the bouy together. To be honest here I thought we had 900mtrs to go. But it was only 400. So I start winding it up a bit and take a small lead on him. I still felt strong so I trusted my sprint. I hindsight, If I had known it only was 400mtrs left I would have gone crazy directly after the bouy. Anyway, we were rampaging along. Along side, were some ridicilously large spectator and photographer boats.

Taking the lead…but, allready here I was starting to understand what was going to happen…a big boat taking over…

These guys were putting down such huge swells in all directions that the rowing in rate 36 was rather scarry. Erik got ahead a bit. I went for my super sprint and directly felt I was passing him again, but than these 1,5 meter boat wave came diagonallu from behind and actually stopped me from rowing for a few strokes, my boat twisting at least 30 degrees of course. I adjusted and sprinted on, catching up again! The sames moment I thought I passed him, Erik stopped rowing…we crossed the line.

Scrambling back onto the beach still wondering if I made it or not..

One hour later and many french judges in confusing discussions it was decided that I won silver. The guy who sponsored us with the Eurodiffusion boats actually saw my name as winner on a list, but that appearantly had changed.

Anyy way, real good fun, lots of sun, sand and surf! TOTALLY MY CUP OF TEA…

Nope…did not make it…silver medal. (a nice one at least)

Unfortunately racing has to wait to sunday 10:27. Freak winds and waved washed away all three beaches and all the boat had to be sort of stashed into the restaurants.

Lets hope winds will fall tonight. It will however be a hell of a race tomorrow with MASSIVE swells I can imagine. Exciting.

see ya!

Paul

Two hours to go ty my final. One hour to go to Louise’s final in the single.

The weather has taken controll over the beach. 150kg heavy quads are rolling along the beach as if the were made out of paper. Thundering rolling waves all over the bay. Mayhem.
All rowing is postponed. We will recieve a briefing in a few minutes. DAMN.. it felt I was really peaking now

Be in touch…

Paul

Arrived here in Cannes on wednsday afternoon. A few days ago.

In a untypical French style everything went like clockwork. Picked up at the airport, welcome to the rowing club, here are your boats (all brand new) and there is your hotel. Ooh yeah, the beach is a 500mtr stroll that way. 20 degrees and a light breeze with a blazing sun…is this really a rowing regatta?

The gulf of Cannes is was like a mirror,….more or less. We quickly rigged our boats, sort of measured quickly through the basic settings and headed of to sea through the narrow channel. The single, double and qoads were all allocated different beaches. Everything felt great. When I got back to the beach later on, I noticed some more well used looking boats. By judging of the shoe sizes I figured it were big strong guys so I decided to measure there oars and rigg a bit. WHO!…major difference with my setup. I was at least 3 gears heavier than they were. I radically changed my settings and noticed a rather dramatic increase in speed. (GPS) GOOD!

The beach now packed with boats and nervous rowers running around. I love the combination of lets say a surfski paddle race (beach) and a rowing regatta. Having the boats fulled with sand and salt water is just part of the game. Next morning the conditions were totally different again. More calm water, but with a nice swell. This is fun! From bouy 3 to 4 you can pick up great surf and I clocked 20km’s and hour on one wave. Keeping up a rowing rythm is more or less scarry than.

Friday afternoon it was race time. Two heats with 20 boats. I watched the first one on which Peter my old double partner was racing in. 42 minutes later he came in winning having won his race with a 58 second lead! Impressive. I knew he was fast as he has been trainging on really bad water in Helsingborg now for a while. After a good warmup I pressed my chronometer down on the 5minute signal. Dispite that I was slow of the start. I quickly tried to achieve a nice boatspeed and noticed I was keeping up with the pack. This is easy I felt. Than I looked over my right shoulder and noticed that one guy (he who I measured his oars and rig from) He was way ahead…DAMN.

Ok, focus..this is a race you idiot…race it! So I focussed on getting as many good full strokes down to the water as possible (not easy with the boat being tossed about). I sort of maneged to link some very good runs and soon was ahead of the pack. After a 1000mtrs I took the lead and just maitained my steady pace. I rounded bouy 2- stopped rowing adjusted my footstrap, reset the GPS for bouy 3 and shot of again. This is a long stretch 3,5km’s more or less againt the waves and wind. Just keep putting down the as many longs strokes as possible. FINALLY I could see bouy three. The turn was fun, getting the swell now nearly 2 mtrs sometimes from behind. 5 hard strokes and your flying. I sort of decided that all the rowers should be able to get their boat to surf, but not all have the power to actually push hard when rowing up the wave…so I decided to really power through those parts. A finished two and a half minutes ahead of the 2nd guy. Relieved. But is will be a hell of a race today!
The conditions are much WORSE! The B finals have allready been cancelled. Can I handle this?

I will try to give everybody a good race….we will see!

This weekend my job forced me to take our 60 best dealers to an island in the archipelago and tell them all about next years news and spoil them with some Swedish specialities (dont worry, it was only food and beverages…)
Anyway that weekend would otherwise have been great for final preparations for Cannes. So how could we combine this…. well by rowing the Coastal Racing boat out to the island and back again. No big deal really. Its only 20km or so, but the navigation is tricky. Thousands of islands. Louise rowed her out. 2 hours laters she actually made it in to Finnhamn. I was really impressed that she made it out there without help of her old GPS that she used when she rowed around the entire Swedsish coast last year www.kustrodderskans.se Anyway, Sunday afternoon was my turn. It crossed my mind to just head out without a map. I have paddled the stretch a few times in a kayak. I headed of way to late…in a hauling headwind and rain. On the open fjords it was white horses, and I thought it was great excerecise in for next weekend. So damn happy I was that I brought that map. After a few km’s all the islands look the same and it is frustrating to stop rowing and puzzle out where on earth you are. Meanwhile the wind pushes the boat back in such a speed that she fills up with water through the self bailing back. Not great.
Anyway just befor dark I made it back to the harbour where Louise was waiting for me. I feel weird infor this race….During all the races this year I have been prepping myself really hard. Doing the hard work in many hard sessions in insanely intensive intervals. But now for months I have only been doing easy 1 hours sessions max one a day and I dont really feel ready to go to war at all. Damn this sucks. Sure I have done some hard rows in this heavy rowing boat…lets see what will happen!

Start list have been made available. All info on www.worldrowing.com Results will be there live as well!