Paul Rosenquist

Back home from Austria. Rowed 20km this morning and lifted weights this afternoon. I think that is always the typical training after these kind of races. The long distance rowing because of all the short hard outings of the last week make you feel weird, and than the weight because you always feel that those legs and biceps can be a lot bigger after having been amungst small giants all the time…

Now with some distance to it all it seems that the weekend actually was not to bad. I am and was really dissapointed with the result. 25th…that really sucks. But there are lots of positive things. I raced three races. One heat, one repechage and a F final. I was hoping to have either win the heat or the repechage so I could go the semi finals wich lead to either A,B or C final.
In the heat I met Ondrej Synek.
This guy is a red hot medal favourite. I decided from the start that I wanted to race a reasonable tough race and go for a second place after Ondrej.

Thursday I rigged my boat that the Norweigian trailer took there. I had never seen so many rowers crammed into such a small area. The regatta course was awesome. Mirror flat water, though stirred up by some 600 rowing boats training franticly. Fine tuning and searching for the feeling that was there before the boats were packed up at home and send here. Probably the best atmosphere I have ever been in. The warm sun, everybody rather relaxed still, and everything can happen. Everybody can still be a winner. We did two trainings and for me it felt as if everything was great.

When I kicked of from the dock I felt a strange tension. During the warmup I noticed that eventhough I did not really feel locked in with the circumstances and in a way sort of absent, all the drills were going pretty good. The same endless silance the last 3 minutes before the start. Man, cant they play some music there? I pulled of a fine start for my doing. Rating 44. Though still trailing the pack. At 1000m I finally slipped into 2nd place. I was really pretty happy with how thins were going and I felt strong. I pushed a bit more and got well clear. At 500 to go I felt pretty tired and I swung my head over to check where 250 was. Than I noticed that Ondrej was only a few meter ahead of me…damn it! Since I allready there was so tired, I did not feel like rowing that afternoon in the Repechage. 350mtrs to go rating 33….damnit he is so close, lets go for it. I pushed the throttle down and was chasing the big Czech at 38. 150 meters later I learned that it was not really working. I continued my sprint but with less fire and ended a second behind him. Shit….this was not smart. I felt that I paid pretty much for this. My bum was hurting bad and my lung were burning. A good race…but to no avail.
The time than was 11:00 and I went to the grand stand to say hi to my mum and her friend Tom that came over from Holland to cheer. I could not hear them cheering though since Frida’s family outvoiced them without any troubles. Thanks!
I had a lunch and than made the bad choice of staying att the course. I took a matras from the athletes tent and crashed down for 4 hours in the shade. 35 degrees or something and I felt that I was definately not getting any more energetic. I tried to totally not think about rowing for three hours. Read some in my new Clive Cussler and listen to my friends of Metallica. But it did not work. Could only think of the damn rowing. How I was going to beat this Croatian guy. I was pretty sure the Portugese could not be that much. When finally it was time to move again I felt that my legs were not fresh at all. A damp hot and windstill racing coarse lay in front of me. Attention…… beeep. I knew this guy was going to sprint of and that I would be grinding him down after the 1000mtr mark. It went to plan. He shot of. After 30 strokes I felt my legs were starting to suffer. It was not going smoothly. I was however pushing to keep the rating high but it costed more than I wanted it to. At 750 I was getting impatiant and I probably made a small error. I started to push harder and wanted to see if I could winch this guy in. I looked over at 1000m and found out that my push did not really work. I than realized how damn spent I was and that this was going to go all the way. Somehow I just could not see it happen and let the guy go. I dropped of to 29 or so and paddled the rest in. I was so bloody dissapointed. At that moment it felt as I gave up, but now afterwards I sort of understand that is the result of many small things that I should learn of.
I came second in that race, but as I learned afterwards the people not going to the semi finals were divided over the D,E,&F finals ranked by their times in the repechage. As i just cruized in ,my time was bad and it sent me to the F final. A louzy eavening followed. The next morning I had an early race. I needed to finish this of with a good race for myself, so I decided to totally ignore the other rowers and just try to row the damn course as good as I can.

I definately did not burn away at the start, but it was slighlty quicker than most of the guys I thought. The Frenchman however took of. Aah basically everybody did. I was last. But at as I found my rythm in a nice easy 32, I notice than Tom Solesbury, the English guy was not getting away more. At the 1250mtr mark I came alongside him. That felt good. At 500 I saw that the french guy dropped of and than suddenly it was just me and the Tom. I felt really strong there and decided to make it clear. I pressed it up a bit and to more distance. 250 to go. Ok, I gave it a good sprint and got clear water. A fun race.
Later that eavening I trained on a nearly empty course. Wonderfull. Just Olaf Tufte who was still cooling down from his semifinal was still out paddling along.
Lassi went straight from his Heat to the semis but had a hard time there finding the pace. He tried to stay in touch with the Ondrej as well but could not keep up. His hard start made him pay at the end and he got overtaken by Estonia and Argentina. This pushed him to the C final which he than won nicely. Frida didn’t row her best in her semi final either so, she ended up in the B final. I would say that that is not bad, but this lady has high ambitions. She later won the B final easy. Cool.
The twins, had a really bad heat and we so disappointed. They went straight to the D final and won that. But they were not happy.
So, this means we all won our finals….that was positive…But Frida shoud have been in A, Lassi in B, and I in C…..
Later on Sunday we watched the A finals….it was impressive. To me it seems that the Brits and the leighweight Danes have found some magic this winter…