Concept2 Forum

From Row2K:
The battle between the current world champion Mahe Drsydale and the former Olympic gold medalist Rob Wadddell for the single sculls spot in the New Zealand Olympic rowing team will be decided at this weekend's trials. Waddell easily won the national championship at Lake Karapiro on Saturday and later indicated he'd prefer another single race as he's always been a fan of first past the post. But Rowing NZ's high performance manager Andrew Matheson says all rowers will start with a 2 kilometretre erg test on rowing machines on Friday with a rest day on Saturday before starting on the water on Sunday.

The rumor was Waddell set an unoffical 2K erg record a month or so ago, and not likely he's gotten any slower. Since the trials are closed to the media, and it's not an offical C2 sanctioned race, even if he (or Mahe!) were to break the record I suspect it wouldn't be recognized. Wonder if we will ever even hear the offial times. Team NZ is beeing very hush-hush about the whole selection process.

NZ is very lucky to have the two best scullers in the world fighting for the right to represent NZ in 1X.

In the unlikely event of Mahe getting a better erg score than Rob it wouldn't matter. It would only have a 10% weighting towards National crew selection. Only the USA has an obsession with erg scores when selecting their on water rowers. Consequently this is why USA doesn't perform so well in the World Champs & Olympics.

Most countries keep their erg time trials for boat crew selection very secret. This website wouldn't have any of the erg scores logged from National teams unless it was a major indoor race or the individuals logged the times themselves. Hence it wouldn't offer much of a guide for a young Natioanl crew team hopefull.

Rob Waddell is a legend on and off the water. His main focus would be getting a gold medal in Beijing. If an indoor record falls his way while training for that gold medal than that's just a bonus for him.

The word was Rob beat Mahe by a few seconds on the erg test (no times were quoted) but in the first best of three OTW 2K races Mahe beat Rob by 1.5 lengths despite rowing at a lower rate for nearly the entire course. Proves that ergs don't float. I expect Rob to push Mahe to the absolute max in the next "do or die" race for him. If Mahe wins by a similar margin you have to wonder if he was sandbagging at the NZ Nationals.

Rob wins the second race forcing a winner take all third race. After this trials battle the Olympics seem like an after thought.

Holy domination! Drysdale completely owned the race today. There are a couple places b/w 2:30 and 3:30 on the TVNZ video where they are taking strokes right together and Mahe is just walking away. Later in the piece, you can see he is just cruising. Insane.

ccwenk wrote: ...on the TVNZ video ...

link please?

Seems Waddell had some health issues:

Waddell struck down by heart condition as Drysdale wins decider
Rob Waddell has revealed he suffered a heart problem during his loss to Mahe Drysdale in the third and final Olympic single sculls trial on Lake Karapiro today.

Drysdale crushed Waddell by a huge margin in a performance which must make him a certainty to fill the single sculls seat at the Olympic Games in Beijing in August...

http://tinyurl.com/2txbzr

Wow -- that's really inopportune timing. I suppose it is better to happen well before the Olympics rather than in an Olympic heat.

Phil

Rather a shame Rob had a recurance of his heart issues. The race was over at 600 meters and Mahe was able to just keep Rob in check from that point on. Compare the times of this race (7:19) to Mahe's WR (6:35) and you can see it really wasn't a race.

Rockin Roland wrote:NZ is very lucky to have the two best scullers in the world fighting for the right to represent NZ in 1X.

In the unlikely event of Mahe getting a better erg score than Rob it wouldn't matter. It would only have a 10% weighting towards National crew selection. Only the USA has an obsession with erg scores when selecting their on water rowers. Consequently this is why USA doesn't perform so well in the World Champs & Olympics.

Most countries keep their erg time trials for boat crew selection very secret. This website wouldn't have any of the erg scores logged from National teams unless it was a major indoor race or the individuals logged the times themselves. Hence it wouldn't offer much of a guide for a young Natioanl crew team hopefull.

Rob Waddell is a legend on and off the water. His main focus would be getting a gold medal in Beijing. If an indoor record falls his way while training for that gold medal than that's just a bonus for him.[/quote]


You should look up your facts, US use their erg scores especially for the 8+, and if you look that up they have most olympic golds in 8+ by far, how can you say they are not doing good?

Thetanium wrote: You should look up your facts, US use their erg scores especially for the 8+, and if you look that up they have most olympic golds in 8+ by far, how can you say they are not doing good?

USA places more emphasis on erg scores for national crew selection than most other countries (erg scores in Australia only have a 10% weighting towards crew selection). As the 8+ is a heaving boat rather than a tapping boat, like the 2-, you can get away with less technical rowers than in the smaller boats. Hence the USA has a tendancy to put all its eggs in the one basket (8+). Perhaps now with compulsory erg testing on slides that may change.