Going for gold: the Olympic diary of rower James Chapman (Part VI)

The breath-taking, cathartic bus trip across the Alps was just the tonic after a rigorous, and sometimes wayward 10-day training camp in the northern Italian town of Varese.

Read last week’s installment of the diary

The scenic route, via the famous 800-year-old San Gotthard Pass connecting the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland to the northern German-speaking part, took us to the town of Lucerne, the venue for our next World Cup assignment.

Our camp in Varese was taxing, rainy, and not without a minor misadventure.

On a rare day when the weather cleared and cross-training was scheduled, we met up with ex-Olympic lightweight rower, now professional cyclist, Cameron Wurf. He lives and trains in the area, and our first assignment was to cycle up Campo Dei Fiori. For a bunch of heavyweight rowers, a solid hill climb like this was slow going but bloody good for the heart and legs.

After a cold descent, we headed over to Laveno on Lago di Maggiore, checked out the scenery flashing past and then headed for home. At least we thought we were.

The cycle was meant to be around three-and-a-half hours. The trip back from Laveno was meant to be approximately 60 minutes, but when we’d been cycling for 90 and Wurfy didn’t recognise any of the surrounding scenery, we started to get a bit edgy (despite the amazing countryside).

Just as we were running low on water and calories, we finally saw our hotel on the horizon after five-and-a-half hours in the saddle. The legs were moving slow at that stage but we’d pumped plenty of aerobic volume into our lungs.

Training on the water in the rain was intriguing. On some occasions, the last thing you wanted to do after warming up and stretching in a dry, warm boat shed was to step out into the rain. However, the crew handled it well and there was a lot of positive chat: from “c’mon boys let’s get into it” to the more direct and unambiguous “harden the f*%k up”. Anyway, we race in the rain, so we train in the rain.

That’s one of the great things about being in a crew the size of the Eight. Others are there to fire you up when you’re having an off day, or lacking motivation and sometimes you’re there to give others a motivational kick-start when they’re struggling.

The lake was actually flattened out a bit post-rain, which was ideal for our training. A mirror-like lake allows us to feel the way the boat is responding to our oar work and the way each other is applying power. It’s much more difficult to feel these nuances when the wind blows and the water is chopped up. That is why a lot of rowers train during ridiculously early hours.

We were happy with our preparation in Italy, doing some more specific race preparation during our sessions and achieving some of our targets over set distances. Racing preparation is a wobbly juggling act for the coaches due to the physical intensity of the work. High intensity work fatigues different athletes in different ways and this is no more evident than in the Eight, where there are so many differing body types. We’ll discover the fruits of our lactic labour in racing this weekend.

The whole Australian Rowing Team is now together in Lucerne, with a few crews arriving last weekend after staying in Australia to keep training rather than racing in the 1st World Cup event in Munich. It’s great to have absolutely everybody here; it really gives us all strength and the team is so big that we can draw inspiration and confidence from the performance of others.

It’s also great to see some new faces and hear news, rowing gossip and football scores from back home. Our manager, Ray “Razor” Ebert keeps us VERY up to date with the AFL and NRL scores (he’s from Briz-Vegas) and unfortunately keeps reminding me how badly the Bunnies are doing. At least the ‘Tahs are keeping my spirits elevated for another week.

The teams were starting to arrive at the course today, with the bigger teams entering almost every boat class. The Chinese are flooding the boat park, with more than one entry in some events, as they still haven’t finalised some selections, and the Canadians are in attendance after their notable absence from the Munich World Cup.

The Canadian men’s Eight were World Champions in 2007 and we are looking to see how our performance compares to the benchmark crew.

Heats start on Friday, with our event starting at 2:12pm Central European Time (10.12pm AEST on Friday). The results can be viewed on www.worldrowing.com and the racing can be watched live on www.wcsn.com.

James has been selected in the Australian men’s eight for the Beijing Olympics. He will be producing a diary for The Roar in the lead-up to the start of the Games on August 8. You can receive emails of James’ column by signing up here.