Diary Extracts

THE five has been a four for over a week now. In the end the decision was not a surprise: during the last two months Tim Foster produced a series of performances that gave him the upper hand. It would have taken something very special from Ed Coode at the national pairs trial to turn that around. After finishing second to Tim and me there was no real doubt about the personnel in the four. Ed will probably race with Greg Searle at the first World Cup Regatta for which they will be among the favourites. Although they didn't win the trial they did beat Steve Redgrave and Matt Pinsent. Not many pairs have done that.

Having spent the previous three weeks preparing to race against your crewmates, the transition to rowing together has been seamless. This season is all about the four; nothing else matters. The faith we have in each other is total, none of us believes there is an oarsman who could strengthen our crew and beyond that I feel we are a better crew than the sum of our parts.

Now the decision has been made we feel that the brakes have been released, the Olympics are within sight. The more intensive preparation following the stamina-building winter's training really starts now. Having said that, we expected a few days of lighter training following trials but apparently 'what comes from rowing goes from rowing'. We can vouch for the wettest April on record.

With the first World Cup Regatta at Munich only five weeks away the selection of other countries' fours are beginning to be confirmed.

This adds some spice to the training, where the workload remains high for the next three weeks in preparation for the defence of our World Cup series. Due to injuries this will be the third successive year that the first race of the season has seen a different line-up in the four from the one that won the World Championship the previous year.

This gives the preparation an extra edge, as racing in the unknown is always exciting. The last time we raced in this combination was the 1998 World Championship final.

There are four months between Munich and the Olympic final - a long time to hold form. This is something that we do not have to worry about. Our coach, Jurgen Grobler, has coached a gold medal at every Olympics since 1972 (apart from East Germany's boycott of Los Angeles) and our confidence in him and his programme is absolute. We are aiming to go through this season as we did the last one: undefeated.

That is easy to say but harder to achieve. In rowing the Olympics is everything. You can win World Championships but if you do not win the Olympics you have never truly been at the top. People forget world champions but not Olympic ones. The World Championships are important but the rowing is about the Olympics.

The competition will be tougher; our opposition's winter training will have been of higher quality and with more focus. Most probably we have been the attention of that focus. From the formation of the four in 1997 the Sydney Olympics has been the only race we absolutely have to win and despite all of our success over the last three years anything but gold is failure.

This attitude applies to any of the true Olympic sports, by that I mean any sport where the greatest prize of that sport is winning the Olympics. Besides rowing, sports such as athletics, swimming and gymnastics also exemplify this. Competitors in tennis, football and baseball cannot feel the same way about an Olympic gold medal; it does not mean the same as winning Wimbledon, the World Cup or the World Series. There may be a nice bonus from the sponsor but ask a tennis player or footballer what they most want to win and I doubt they would say the Olympics.

The way the four of us feel about this summer's Games is what sport is all about, I think about it every day and even after winning four gold medals Steve is the same. Now each of us knows the other three with whom they are going to try to make this dream come true. It is not long now.

Courtesy of The Daily Telegraph, Monday 24 April 2000

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After Lucerne setback, rowing crew are desperate to atone with gold, By James Cracknell

WRITING this from our altitude training camp in Silvretta, Austria, just above Galtur the memory of our defeat three weeks ago in Lucerne has not faded. The pain is something that none of us want to go through again and in the grand scheme of things that race was of zero importance. But it really hurt. I cannot imagine my feelings if we fail to win the gold in Sydney. Our aim was to remain undefeated this season. That is now not possible. What is, and I would like to think a a certainty, is that we are going win in Sydney. This is the race that we have said the four should be judged on. Anything other than gold is a failure.

That may sound arrogant but that is what we all believe. Our faith in each other is absolute and we know if we produce our best row at the Olympics nobody will beat us. We now have to go out and produce it on Sept 23 and as we found in Lucerne, anything but our best is not going to be good enough.

Why did we lose at Lucerne? Obviously we have been over the race and a number of reasons have been suggested - too much racing, too much training between the races and not being on top of our rowing technically. These may have been contributing factors but we under-performed and were unable to respond when the race started to go away from us. There can be no excuses in Sydney.

We had a week of training away from each other already planned after Lucerne due to the Olympics being so late in the year. It was supposed to be a time for relaxing and had been eagerly anticipated for months. Going into this period having lost was not part of the plan. None of us could get Lucerne out of our heads and we were all itching to get on with it after a couple of days.

I honestly believe that we will be faster in Sydney because we were beaten. The position we are in now is also psychologically easier. In the past we have always been expected to win and winning has been a relief rather than the adrenaline-fuelled joy that comes with victory as an underdog. Winning in Sydney will feel very different. Now we are no longer clear favourites and the only ones with something to lose, other crews now believe they can win and they have to cope with that.

We are halfway through our time up the mountain and we are thinking only of the benefit that we are getting of training with less oxygen. Galtur has not been the most geographically stable region recently with fatal avalanches during the last two winters. The common theme so far has been rain leading to flooding in the valley below us. Hopefully we will not be stranded up here.

Since the formation of the four we have come here every season and it is the perfect place to train. We are isolated from the outside world. There is only a lake, a restaurant, our army accommodation and mountain walkers around, not forgetting the wild horses that I had to chase away from outside my window last night. Apparently the Russians have the same problems with bears at their altitude set-up, so that made my midnight horse-chasing look less heroic.

Following our defeat at Lucerne, this is the best place we can be here as the media make no demands and we can get on with our preparation. Our focus has stepped up to another level and this may not have happened if we hadn't lost. The quality of training has improved and we are constantly asking ourselves questions physically, mentally and technically. This will continue every session from now until the final takes place in Sydney.

Whatever reasons we put the defeat down to there is no way we can be 100 per cent sure that it was only us going slower. We were certainly not at our best but how much have the other crews improved? Can they repeat that form? Was our poor performance a one off? It is questions like this that will make sure we get the most out of each day left before the Games.