Well, it was a good regatta for the small part of the development squad that made it down to Tassie, putting our first season of training (and coaching!)to the test.

The start of the week saw the U/19 men’s pair of Charlie Marriott and Dane Buchorn get off to a shaky start, with a 4^th in the heat. This saw the boys race the repacharge, which they won in emphatic style in the slick time of 6.56. After a 21 second improvement from the heat to rep, the boys were looking good for a spot in the final, but in difficult conditions, the relatively new combo only missed qualifying for the final by one spot.

Not long after this, the U/19 men’s double combination of James Beam Franki and Tommy “The Terminator” Wear raced their heat. In an impressive start, the boys cruised to a comfortable 2^nd, to directly qualify for the semi. Then, after posting the second fastest time in the large field of 26 crews, the boys set a blistering pace in the semi posting the fastest first 1500m of everyone before easy off and letting the NSW champions Barwon take the win.

For the final the following day, the boys had a special preparation, which included ingesting litres of chocolate milk, and the coaches cooking, followed by  a dip in the sub zero Cradle Mt river with a couple of Mosman’s Olympians- The Irish Brothers- Sean and Dan Noonan. This seemed to do the trick, in a huge head wind and in the outside lane the boys went toe to toe with the WA gorillas (see photo below). They couldn’t quite sustain the pace through the middle to win, but fought like tigers to hold off a fast finishing Barwon for the National Silver Medal!!

Both crews are now in preparation for Junior Selection trials in April, and we look forward to more good things.

Proud Coach, TL  

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This entry was posted by Tom on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 20:07and is filed under News. You can leave a response.