Today i had the honour of watching the australian mens lightweight 4- win the rowing world championship for 2011. It was certainly a surreal feeling watching what i would say was one of the finest techniqual display of rowing i have ever seen. At no point in the race were they frazzled and they clearly had a plan and stuck to there guns, easy and quickly into a sustainable rythm out of the start loseing a little ground but staying intouch, working through the middle of the race were the fast starting crews started to suffer, and the clinically sinking the boot in with 1/4 of the race to go and breaking the spirits and any chance of the other crews coming back at them. Having had the honour of rowing with each of these 4 fine athletes, sam beltz, todd skipworth, ben cureton, and anthony edwards i realise it was the perfection in performance we have discussed on many occassion while training together and also since i have been out of the sport but very much staying close to all the lads. From last years worlds were they were second they showed that they had the best "easy speed" of all the crews in the world through the middle and a slight lack of conditioning probably cost them gold. Under the watchfull eye of there man of very few words coach brett crow they have stuck to there guns of there idea of executing the perfect race plan and with another 12months of very hard training under there belt's it was clearly evident that easy speed was still far superior and they also had the conditioning to really sink the boot in when it mattered most. It was certainly a amazing victory for a perfect planning and execution of there preperation.
Its also worth noting that unsurprizingly these are 4 far from run of the mill athletes. Anthony edwards is an olympic silver and bronze medalist and multiple colour world championship medalist. Ben cureton also an olympic silver medalist and along with todd skipworth qualified and competed and completed the hawaii ironman in 2009 so a pair of seriously gifted athlete's. In the same year todd also won the olympic distance age group 19-24 triathlon australian championship to further underline his sporting proess. The last but by no means least samual beltz is the power man of the crew and has the australian record and is very close to the world record on the rowing machine for the benchmark 2000m test. While he chooses to focus all his efforts on just rowing unlike the ben and todd, he is certainly one of the most gifted athletes i have been fortunate enough to grow up with and whether it be ping pong, beer pong, rowing or cricket he is always a tuff man to beat and usually for me unbeatable.
Yep was certainly a special 5min 55seconds watching my great mates put in one of the finest displays of team work and spectacular rowing and in the words of the italian commentators the boys were simply "tecniche perfetto, grande atleti, grande vincitore, bravo ragazzi" perfct technique, grand athletes, grand victory, and finally jolly great job.
Cjw
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