The first hurdle cleared...

As most of you will know by now, we won the race for lanes yesterday. As there are only 6 entries we essentially race to seed the lanes for the straight final this Sunday (fastest crew in the middle lane). This makes for quite a strange race - as the outcome essentially doesn't matter - everyone makes the A final. There are obviously some advantages to winning the race; firstly, it gives you confidence that you are a faster crew and therefore in a good place for the final and secondly, you are in the optimum position in the final in terms of being able to see what is going on and judge the race.

However, crews do play games. You can never be sure that everyone brought their A game to the table. There are a couple of reasons for doing this. Mainly, as you've probably realised, you don't want your competition to know your real speed and your race profile (how fast you go in each section - do you have a fast start or finish for example) and therefore you still have an element of surprise come the final. In addition, although there is a slight advantage to being in the middle lane, ultimately you can win from any lane as, obviously, the course is meant to be fair and every crew has to race 2,000m.

To that end, although we won yesterday we can be certain of one thing - the final will not necessarily be the same, both in terms of profile and outcome. Yesterday's race - although it gives us a psychological advantage - doesn't mean anything. We have certainly not put the gold medal around our necks. We are still preparing the same as we did prior to that race and steeling ourselves for a race that could have anything in store for us. All the crews start level and all are aiming to race 2,000m faster than the competition. On Sunday, we will be looking to deliver a performance that hopefully does just that.