Rowing is a very posh affair and like a sports day at a liberal independent school there are rosettes for everyone. Even if you finish last in the heats you can get another go through the reportage`. The venue for the Olympic Rowing was as equally posh, Eton-Dorney lakes on the Berkshire/Bucks border, the 25,000 seat event on the grounds of Eton public school. Due to public footpaths crossing the land you can sneak into the venue and watch the racing from the middle bit where the coaches on bikes go by for free, as did I. We went on Wednesday and had a great day out to witness one gold and one bronze and bombed across to East London to watch Bradley Wiggings win the second gold of the games, all for nothing!
That 25,000 capacity was behind our teams from the first hooter, definitely an advantage, literally sucking the British teams up the water, as if the British boats were riding a tsunami of hope and pride, the antidote to Iraq. We can equal those bombastic American crowds any day! So powerful was the support the British boats would make 13 out of the 13 finals they entered and take 9 medals.
New Zealand's Eric Murray and Hamish Bond got the racing underway by smashing the men's pair world record on day one in the heats by a massive six seconds in their opening Olympic heat, coming home in six minutes and eight seconds. This record was held by James Cracknell and Mathew Pinsent, the NZ pair unbeaten since Beijing.
For the first time there was no doubt the British girls were better than the boys in the home team. Great Britain's Helen Glover and Heather Stanning set a new Olympic record with a dominant victory in the first heat of their women's pair. The British girls have won all three of their World Cup races this year. No women has ever women Olympic gold in rowing going into London.
Cornish girl Glover is very sporty and was the first young athlete to win any sort of world championship medal from the ‘Sporting Giants’ scheme, set up to identify potential Olympic champions the day after we were awarded the Games. She only started rowing in 2008 and was world silver medalists by 2010; talent spotted by Steven Redgrave no less. As a junior she was a fringe England hockey squad player and cross-country performer. Stanning is a captain in the Air Force and headed to Afghanistan in the autumn, Olympic champion or not.
The rather masculine Catherine Grainger was the only Olympic medal holder in women’s rowing going into the games, getting three straight silvers in three straight games, hoping to gold here. Grainger and Anna Watkins broke the Olympic record in the women's double sculls with a time of 6:44.33 to win the first heat and so straight through to the final. They looked fantastic and nailed on for the gold, already looking like the women will win the bulk of the Olympic medals in London. Redgrave revealed that he had spoken to David Beckham and they will get a peck on the cheek if they win gold in the final.
Djibo Issaka of Nigeria raised a smile or two in the single sculls as he trailed in 1 minute 39 seconds behind the winner of his heat, the only black face in the regatta by the looks.
This was public school territory. For some reason black people tend not to like water based events and so it makes you smile when they do take the plunge. Couple that with the fact it’s a university sport then no surprise he took for ever to get in an Olympic boat, one borrowed from the Slovenian team. The crowd loved it and cheered him in. The International Olympic Committee operates a wildcard thing and so you do get these joke entrants, the guy like one of those chaps with all the banter in pub toilets. They allowed a San Marino chap into the archery and he nearly killed a spectator when the arrow stalled and ricocheted off the target frame and spun out of control through the air and glanced off an official.
***GOLD***
***Bronze***
The girls delivered in the rowing, Stanning and Glover romping home in their double skulls final, a brilliant gold and the first for the women in the Olympics and for team GB in this year’s Games. The men’s GB eights bravely blasted out for gold but just faded in the last 250m to take bronze, all or nothing almost paying off as the all conquering German team remained unbeaten. 40-year-old Chris Searle of the infamous bawling coach win of Barcelona 1992 was in the London bronze eight, twenty years after his podium in Spain.
***Gold***
Grainger and Watkins blew the rest away with a stunning gold in the women’s double skulls (two oars each), Grainger bumping up her silver to gold, four games, four medals, retirement on hold. Both claim to have asthma, a diagnosed condition on the rise in elite athletes. It has gradually risen at almost every Olympic Games since the 1970s. At the Atlanta Games in 1996 some 20% of the US team declared problems with asthma and almost 21% of Team GB had asthma in 2004 tests, compared with 8% of the British population. Some say inhalers help you breathe faster and so more common with endurance athletes. Also, 17.3% of cyclists in Beijing 2008 were permitted to use inhaled agonists and won 28.9% of individual medals. And so far it is still not understood why.
*2 Bronze*
Britain's George Nash and Will Satch snatched a bronze as Eric Murray and Hamish Bond underlined their tag as favorites with gold in the men's pair. Great Britain's Alan Campbell claimed bronze in the men's single sculls as New Zealand's Mahe Drysdale, collapsing at the finish in the arms of Steve Redgrave.
***2 GOLD***
Andrew Triggs Hodge, Pete Reed, Tom James and Alex Gregory beat arch-rivals Australia in sensational fashion to win Britain's fourth consecutive Olympic title in the coxless fours. In the very next race, Sophie Hosking and Katherine Copeland produced a stunning performance to win gold in the lightweight women's double scull; the look of surprise on their faces what the Olympics is really about. The fast food sponsors have tried to steal the games but you don’t become a champion eating that junk.
Then the drama moved up a gear. Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter, the lightweight men's double scull champions in 2008, were less than a hundred yards into the race when a seat broke.
The rest of the boats stopped and after Purchase used a screwdriver to mend the seat, the race re-started. The boys went on to win silver with fourth place France (it had to be) protesting to try and steal a cheap bronze. If the seat wasn’t busted and merely not secured proper they had a case. But the protest was thrown out and team GB had achieved their best regatta in Olympic history with nine medals and four gold’s to top the medal table.
China and America were no where to be seen. Sit down sports are our thing. The university system and lottery money means we have the right systems in place to find the right champions and the statistic that 50% of the Games gold’s have been won by public school educated people can be justified here, privately educated kids 7% of the nation’s population, the least likely lot to buy a lottery ticket to help fund their sports.
-----------------------------
The Final Medal Table
------------------------------
1 Great Britain & N. Ireland ---- 9 medals
(Gold’s 4 Silvers 3 Bronze 2)
2 New Zealand --- 5 medals
(Gold’s 3 bronze 2)
Germany ----- 3 medals
(2 gold’s 1 bronze)
---------------------------
I'm pretty sure this lot didn't buy lottery tickets! 
