Paul Rosenquist

The weekend is over, the trailer and all the boats are home again in the boathouse. A good weekend for Stockholms Rowing club. 4 National titels have been claimed. I rowed in 3 of the boats. Two of the races we absolute thrillers…the eight…We were expecting a race here. Falkenberg have a big group of very properly schooled rowers and even a few national team guys. Mixing young and strong with old and experienced we knew they would be a force to be reckoned with. We also knew however that we outgun them on the rowing ergometer and that we actually rowing very fast on our practises. So with big confidence we stepped into this race. They tension in our boat was however tangible. Extremely good fun to feel how ex world class rowers suddenly become like as if they are rowing the first race again… We shot of from the startline…however not as light and quick as we normally do. A sign of the tension…

Ruairi, Dave, Paul, Robert, Janne, Walle, Tobbe, Tobbe and Henke

We rather quickly found a smooth rate of 36 and were rolling on. I, and the others to, felt that we were doing nicely and expected Falkenberg to drop of at either the 500mtr mark or at most the 1000mtr mark. They right on us. Perhaps even a metre ahead. Every time we did a push or a move…they were one small step ahead of us.

The eight is tricky…its not like a single…you cant say ‘ok, now I’ve got to move’ no, everything has to collectively and you can disturb the rythm by pulling to hard or whatever. 500m to go, and those bastards were still there!! I felt our engine was coughing a bit… a small panik perhaps… thank god we had discussed what we would do in the last 300 meters…so it was just a matter of waiting…meanwhile still striking 36. Falkenberg took an other meter. They were now ahead with maybe 100cm. Finally little Tobbe, our cox, came with the call. We would do bursts of ten strokes from 300mtr to the finsish. After the 3rd burst, finally things clicked and we pushed by them winning the race with nearly nothing. Falkenberg had raced the race of their lives and we happy with that. We were mostly releaved that we won and not specifically happy with our row. It was great fun though!
An hour later, Henke, David, Walle and me were due again on the startline this time in the quad. For me perhaps the biggest race as it is a whole new thing to stroke that boat. Steering in those damn narrow lanes with the stiff side wind was also making things more of a challange than necesary.


We were not expecting a whole lot of competition, but rowing is not about that. It is about putting down the best you can perform. Peter my old double mate got a crew toghether. That was cool.
The start went, Henrik was nervous as hell again. And I just pretended I was rowing my single…just do the same. We quickly came to our start rate of about 42 and kept it for at least 250mtrs. By than we were clear ahead and I felt how smoothly the guys behind me were getting into the rythm. It was light rowing, based on speed and not strenght. Without any trouble I kept it up at 36 to the 1200mtr mark. By than we were miles ahead, but this did not matter. I wanted to row a great race. We slowed it down a bit at 1250 an came down to 34,5 but quickly picked it up again with technique calls at 1500. Just for show we finished with the 250mtr sprint rating 38. Awesome race.
The double Henrik and I won on the saturday. Unfortunately our biggest competitor was not there. Pliggen, Lassi’s coach decided to stay home for personal reasons. A pitty, cause it would be have been fun to go hard against them.
We tried to row as light and smooth from the start as possible. Conditions we pretty bad I thought…waves and huge wind from the side. Henrik crabbed the third stroke…ok, we blew the start…but we were ahead anyway. Quickly coming back to 39 or so we pulled away. From than on we sort of struggled with th e conditions, and I lost my oar at least twice. But everytime we got the momentum going we pulled away. With a nice quick last 300mtrs we finished 25 seconds ahead of the rest. Good race.

The girls had lots of racing to…Louise and Britte ended up 5th and that was actually a good start for them. Louise’s arm was still hurting a lot. Their eight came 2nd.

Ok, thats about it for now…pics will come soon!

cheers