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Jurgen and Thommo approach selection decisions at the GB training camp on Lake Varese, April 2008 Tuesday 8th April and as invited the massed media turn up to Varese, where GB's Olympians are whizzing up and down a pretty lake and not finalising crews. There's a lot going on at the camp at the moment, but the overall message was "still rather undecided in some areas" and the official team announcement for 2008 is still planned for as late as 30th April. But before we look at how this year is shaking out, I want to take you on a time-travel trip. Cast your minds back to 2004, and how the GB openweight men's Olympic campaign unfolded: it bears remembering. It was an eventful year, yet by this stage (ie early April) almost nothing had happened. The first big shock for the public had come in February, when Grobler put Pinsent and Cracknell into the four for the FISA Team Cup, and after gold and silver, announced formally that those two together with Steve Williams and Josh West were his new M4-. However, this quartet didn't race together again: after switching into pairs for the 2004 April trials, Williams and West were soundly trounced (into fifth) by Partridge and Hodge, while Cracknell sculled because Pinsent had tonsillitis. Within a few days Grobler had yet another new four to announce: Pinsent, Partridge, Cracknell and Williams, with Josh West back in the eight. Then the real upheavals began. Crackers' rib went just before the first World Cup, so the initial spare man, former world champion Ed Coode, sat in for several weeks. Coode had returned from a big injury the previous year, but ninth at trials with Kieran West and other unsparkling results left him out of the team to start with. Gold in Poznan, then a semi-final win in Munich was reduced to fifth after Cracknell caught a massive cold and Tom Stallard had to be substituted in just before the final, Coode having moved up into the eight by now. The original crew was ready to race again in Lucerne, won its semi but was then apparently caught napping by the USA and Canada in the final, with the first signs of what we now know was Partridge's injury hampering them. Within a fortnight the lung puncture had been diagnosed, and Coode was hoicked out of the eight into the four for Henley, Athens and for good. Rollercoaster didn't even begin to describe that year, for more than a dozen oarsmen and their coaches. Changes in the 2004 four rippled repeatedly right down the squad. Maybe that earthquake-like upheaval is in Jurgen Grobler's mind as he takes his time to sort out who he wants where this year, when it is clear that if he gets it right, the men's eight, four and pair could all go to Beijing with medal chances, and perhaps at least one with a claim to a gold. Grobler found out in 2004 though that things never go as you plan, and 2008 has given him no reason to doubt that. Already we are nearly a month behind the timetable he and high performance director David Tanner had informally set themselves. The reason the media were invited out to Varese for 8th April was that selections were expected to have been done more than three weeks before. Now the date had to be honoured, but with choices still up in the air. Fours seat-racing, moved to the end of March, was first postponed due to the large numbers of illnesses, swapped with the 2km erg test, and then turned out to be relatively inconclusive. Instead of the big bang of selection and announcement, we have had weeks of whimpering rumour, possible combinations trickling out, only to be shaken up as Grobler tinkers with options one by one, trying to get the intensive camp-training his boys need done, while still mulling over his choices. So we all turned up on Tuesday at the shores of the lake, parachutist correspondents aplenty, tv cameras, and all. First a trip on the water with the women and lightweights, of whom more later. Then, after glimpsing the men's crews passing us (yes, the camera launch immediately followed), lunch with their squad and a chance to grill Grobler, then Hodge and Reed on what was going on. Jurgen was first, and genial but adamant that he has not yet made up his mind. He's spent the Varese camp so far making small changes. No problem about admitting that the four comes first, and that Hodge and Reed will be in it. (Well, what else did you expect?)
"Yes, that's not controversial, they are our leading athletes", commented His Teutonicness. "We set quite early that we'll test people and we'll build a four around those two guys. Of course there's always the question could they row the pair, but I think we decided after the last three years we had the best success in the four. We lost one important race - the important race - last year, but otherwise we have shown we are very competitive to the top end, so our whole process was building the four first around those two guys, they are our fastest pair." So who joins them? It's been Egington and James, then James and Williams. Not sure if Partridge and Egington has been tried, but those are the main names under scrutiny at present, and Langridge could still be considered, though Jurgen didn't mention him. The difficulty is finding out which will be best, with high-rate work so rarely on the schedule at this point in Jurgen's programme. (And the programme is king - he isn't about to dump his power-endurance training just to get selection finished, so he and the athletes have to work out which seems fastest during power strokes, low-rate training, technical outings and capped-rate pieces). "You can never judge a boat at pace when you just do UT2 in it", points out Hodgey later. Then you have to factor in what Grobler already knows about Partridge and Williams and how they work with Hodge and Reed. That's a three years worth mass of data, so even though he's currently trying combinations without one or both of them, it would be naive to think he can't possibly end up with them both back in the boat. At the moment it looks odds-on at least one would be in the eight (good news for that crew) but with results so close anything could happen, especially as his stated goal is to have three medal-potential crews in China. Juggling the list to get the pair and the eight as good as possible just makes it even more complex. When pushed to it, Grobler made it clear he didn't ignore the 2005-7 information he has on Partridge in the four, but also talked in terms which sounded as if he expected Partridge to be in the eight at the moment, to the eight's benefit. And this despite repeatedly discussing what a wonderful winter Alex has had. Perhaps he really is serious about trying for three good medals. The first World Cup - and the relative finish positions and gold-medal percentage of all three crews - will be crucial. There's no way anyone can assume these first-draft lineups, when they are publicly announced on 30th April, will necessarily go to the Olympics. Munich on 8th-11th May represents Grobler's best chance of seeing if he's made the right choices. If he does have big changes from last year's crews in mind, Germany is the perfect place to test the new versions, but he could still revert what he knows are medal-zone combinations. Then an interesting hint - that if the first results aren't what he thinks will produce results for Beijing, he could move the pair into the eight. And second-placed trials pair TJ and Colin Smith have already muddied Jurgen's original calculations massively by greatly improving their erg scores this year. Col's FISA biog lists him as 6ft 1in and 80kgs (though I think it was nearer 82-83 last year): has any other club got someone of that size who can pull 6.00.0 for his 2k? Outrageously impressive. "Colin is somebody it's very difficult to describe", says Grobler. "If you take physical data he's more on the bottom end. But he's a racer, he's just great." So whoever the first-draft pair turns out to be on 30th April (anyone offering odds on it not being Langridge and Smith?) a switch to the eight for the second World Cup might well boost that crew's chances even further.
"We have to look around, what is really our strategy? Do we have the energy to still carry on with all three boats, or are we looking specially for the pair? Or do the next best athletes go in the eight, can we do something like we did in 2000, can we strengthen our eight so we don't spread our talent too much?" So, plenty of wait and see with the men's sweep crews. In sculling, it works out simpler - Alan happy as a toad in mud in his single, and 'the new Steve & Matt' (aka 2006 & 2007 partners Rowbotham and Wells) finally taking their first strokes of the year together back in the double after prolonged injury problems. What about a quad, we ask Jurgen? Depends on how it does at the World Cups, he says: "lots of young guys queueing up to do something" but whether or not they'll be allowed to try and qualify for Beijing - they're the only men's crew which hasn't yet - depends on their speed in Munich. And finally a nice comment on the women's quad - "Especially Katherine Grainger. She's a figurehead for the women's and also international scene - all she needs is now an [Olympic] gold medal, after two silver medals. It's good to have such a figurehead and she shows in every assessment she is the best, and that's a big motivation for the other girls as well. I think the women's side anyway at the last Olympics with three medals was a big step forward, and we've seen in the last three years especially the quad settled in the top position, and with that eight coming through last year. They are really on the case now." A joke about them pushing the men, from a hack, got the response - "Yes of course I don't like to be last in the queue [for medals]. It's a healthy competition in British rowing, we are all one team." Then Hodgey and Reed take the hot seat, and over the course of 10-15 minutes are effectively asked the same prodding question repeatedly by the massed parachuting journos. Who's in the boat? If you can't say who's in the boat, then who do you want in the boat? Which four do you think goes best? Which four would have the best chance of winning a gold medal? What do you think of xx's and yy's strengths and weaknesses? Poor things, they've been dumped in it because Jurgen's just publicly ticked their selection box. By the end both David Tanner and press officer Caroline Searle are hovering right over their shoulders, but the lads do a great job not giving specific enough answers to piss off potential crew-mates, and don't need to be rescued. Pete's a bit frustrated that selection isn't yet finished, and still smarting from the irritation of having been shoved in a different four from Hodgey during the seat-racing at the start of April. They've rowed different combinations in pairs matrices often enough, but rarely been in separate fours, I suspect. However, seat-racing isn't about trying to make the perfect crew, it's about starting with relatively same-speed line-ups and then swapping pairs of people to see if race margins change at all. Everything I hear suggests seat-racing didn't add much new information, and was very close, so now Jurgen's down to the winter results (gym tests, ergs, pairs matrices, 5km and final trials etc), the last three years of data, plus what he can divine from these outing-by-outing changes in Italy. A difficult call. Must be tough for Pete and Andy too though: it sounds certain they'll be in the crew, but they don't yet know who their partners will be, or in what order. So they can't really get down to the nuts and bolts of trying to be fastest four in the universe for the 18 weeks left before the Beijing regatta. There's an edge to the banter at lunch which makes me wonder how everyone else is coping - changes in the four mean changes in the eight too, and bronze-medallist stern pair Heathcote and Bourne-Taylor have already been split up (BT to bow) so that Partridge can be tried in the seven-seat, an obvious option. OK, enough, I'm bored of the guys, and meanwhile there's every bit as interesting a selection battle going on down the other end of the lake. Or, several, according to women's & lightweights supremo Paul Thompson. Going out with them in the morning, most crews looked relatively settled. W4x, LM2x, LW2x and LM4- all the same as last year, But that hides a few options, says Thommo. Headliners first - the world champion quad of Grainger/Houghton/Flood/Vernon may well stay the same, though the women's sculling selection has been hugely disrupted by medical problems which still aren't over. Elise is back in the UK injured (should be fit by Munich), Anna Bebington has been ill though is now better, and Tina Stiller and Beth Rodford have been involved in the sculling group, partly to give it more depth and perhaps bring on potential spares. Rodford's now back with the sweep group, Stiller and Winckless are doubling at the moment, but the real doubles selection waits until everyone is well, which may take weeks. And there will probably be two singles sent to the World Cup once the W2x is organised. Meanwhile PT is cagey, but less so than Jurgen, about the potential return of the 2007 quad. "They're a world champion crew, and we've done some testing with them. There has to be a demonstratable difference in speed to be made [if we are going to change the crew], and so far we haven't seen that it's there". For which I think we must read 'it will probably start the season, and let's see if it's as fast as last year'. Well he's got a point - there's got to be a good reason to disrupt a clearly in-charge world champion crew. There's a lot of effort been put in by athletes and coaches this season to test this hypothesis, but so far the 2007 line-up does look the best one. The same principle appears to be operating with the men's lightweight four, though Thompson does remark pointedly on how well Rob Williams has done this year, so that lineup could still be under scrutiny. Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase are the one set pairing, having staked a convincing claim to stay in the top sculling boat a lot earlier this winter, and relishing the time they need to try and find an extra edge of speed in this hyper-competitive event. Their 2007 women's counterparts, Hester Goodsell and Helen Casey, are also back training together, but there are no other lightweight women at the camp, and Thompson is clear that with a lot of pedigree in the squad (silver LW4x 2007) this question isn't actually finally settled. "The lightweight women, we had some injury and illness through the trials and post-trials, so we're going to do some testing when we get back next week." The women's eight was the one crew which caused a complete upset in the 2008 plans, last September. Enforced changes in the W2- dropped the pair from best sweep boat to merely trying to qualify for Beijing, and overnight the bronze medal that the continually-improving eight nabbed metamorphosed them into top crew instead. This priority has continued, but there's still a drive to try and qualify a pair, not least because it would greatly ease the spares options for the potential medal boats. You're only allowed three per national federation at the Olympics, and that's three to cover four squads (HM, HW, LM and LW), let alone sculling/sweep preferences. Then factor in the choice between the seventh world-medallist sculler after the W4x and W2x are confirmed trying to go as the W1x (also yet to qualify) or joining the eight, and it's clear the women may have to do some more testing and possibly World Cup racing before their Olympic crews are 100% confirmed. But, "most boats it's just a case of here and there really, not major revamps" was the final verdict. And all of this is assuming no injuries or illness at crucial times. Now go back and read the 2004 chronology again. No wonder Grobler and Thompson keep harping on the fact that nothing is quite settled, and hold as many options open as they can. Both men may well already be pretty clear on their likely line-ups in their own minds, but each squad could be just a broken rib or back problem away from complete disruption. There was a lot of touching wood going on in Varese, and there's a long way to go before we can be sure who will sit in which seats on the first day of racing in China.
Rachel Quarrell
Postscript - for those wondering about the non-Olympic world championships, the coaches and David Tanner confirmed between them that no M2+ or W4- will be sent, ie it's just a lightweight squad this year. (The M4+ was cut by FISA automatically after last year's worlds, falling foul of the three-year straight final rule). Instead, potential 2009 GB talent will get its international testing at the Europeans, which means perhaps a bigger team for that than there's been to date. |