Off to a decent start today in the W4X. We had a good draw for our heat this afternoon with China 1, Germany, Australia and Russia. Off in Lane 5 we knew we were going to be a little detached from the action on the far side of the course, but were committed to having a solid, aggressive piece against some of the fastest crews in the world today. Our new lineup seems to be coming together a little more each day, and I think today was a good step for us. We patiently worked through one crew at a time until the last 500 when we fought Germany to the line with just a 1.5s deficit. They took the direct route to Sunday’s final and we are headed to the reps tomorrow, but we don’t feel badly about our performance. We’re just getting started.
Atmosphere on the Rotsee this morning was maybe a little more tense than usual with some unnecessarily close calls in the warm up area. Come on people, it’s not that hard to check over your shoulder before you start your start/builder/horribly timed turn. At least crews were working together to help one another when some of our competitors were making poor navigational choices (“GB! Watch your oars!” or my favorite: “Heads up everyone, China is going the wrong way”).
Personal news from the W4X: Natalie has managed to lose three pair of sunglasses on this trip. Two pair of Rudys and one pair of Oakleys. I’m not sure who packs three pair of sunglasses for a two-week trip anyway, let alone losing them all, but she is accepting donations to fund a replacement set(s) from Wal-Mart for $6.99.
Also, more “mystery dinos” have appeared in Natalie’s things. It seems that she has a secret “dino-mirer” who has been leaving her tiny dinosaurs in her stuff during the trip beginning in Henley. They have appeared in her bag, in her shoes, in her jacket pocket, and in her water bottle. If anyone knows who the dino-mirer is, please contact Natalie directly. We suspect: Marcel the apprentice boatman, and/or the Red Express.
Personal news from my hotel room: Having a minor temper tantrum this PM because I still cannot believe that WorldRowing.com has not modified their web design to be more compatible with Mac browsers. I have a MacBook Pro running the most recent version of Mozilla Firefox, and it refuses to run live results or any audio feed whatsoever from WorldRowing.com. Safari is only slightly better, and still with no audio feed (which is fine by me, I don’t particularly care for Safari anyway). Back in May when WR launched their new site and I mentioned on Twitter that the script was crap because live results weren’t loading on my Mac, their solution was that I download Google Chrome. Are you kidding me? Your solution for your poor website design is for me to download another browser? It’s not like I’m using some random, obscure indie browser, it’s Firefox for God’s sake. Please do something to make this site more navigable and user-friendly… I hate it! I can’t watch or listen to results, and things are impossible to find (yesterday, could not find a regatta timetable to save my life. No doubt they have a man doing the site mapping). I would stop using the site if I could, but unfortunately they’ve got a corner on the results market and I can’t get the information anywhere else.
See you at the race course tomorrow!
Long Live the Dream,
–MK
P.S. who is it that has been reading up on the LIST from 2008? I have had lots of hits on that the past few days… Giuseppe? Is it you?
Megan Kalmoe, OLY 
Next time you are in CH, take the train down to Lausanne and visit the Olympic museum; it is impressive. Then walk down along the lake to the west and call in at the FISA office. There you will find Matt Smith and an office full of women. Only the office boy, Emilio is of male gender. Not too sure which of the staff is in charge of the web-site and I share your frustration with it. A book on punctuation/ grammar would be useful to their journalist.
At first I wasn’t sure why you were commenting on the gender of the FISA office workers, then I remembered saying that it was probably a man doing the website design.
My guess is that the design isn’t done in house… it’s probably contracted. Or maybe it’s Emilio :)
Your damn right about the world rowing site. It’s completely useless! Thought it would improve with the upgrade. Wishful thinking. Good luck in the reps tomorrow!
china!!!!