"You feel like you're at the Olympics. I didn't expect it to feel like that" - Reactions from day 2 of the Olympic Regatta

Day two of the 2024 Olympic Regatta saw six more boat classes get underway – the coxless pairs, lighweight double sculls and coxless fours for men and women. Here are some of the reactions from the crews that began their Olympic campaign in Paris today.

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In the women’s pair, the reigning World Champions Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester (Netherlands) were the winners of the first of the three heats. Clevering is proud to be part of a strong Dutch team here in Paris;

“It’s very inspirational to be in this team. When you see a race day like yesterday, then you’re keener to go today yourself. It was nice also for us that it started and we are in the competition now.”

The fastest time in the women’s pair was set by 2023 World silver medalists, Jessica Morrison and Annabelle Mcintyre (Australia) but Mcintyre is acutely aware of how competitive this boat class is;

“It’s pretty exciting. We’ve seen over the last couple of years all boat classes have gotten faster and, in particular, the women’s pair. I can think off the top of my head four or five different boats that are going to be really hard to beat.”

“The position definitely does matter to us. Historically we’ve been kicked out of an A-final through a semifinal, so for us it’s really important to get out there and race as fast as possible and hopefully get a winning position.”

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The men’s pair also had the reigning World Champions racing, but in a shock result, after a review of the photo finish, they (Switzerland) came fourth, and will need to go through the repechage. Roman Roeoesli remained positive that they will have enough to qualify from the rep;

“We stuck to our plan and it almost worked out quite well, but it didn’t. It gives us a chance to turn little wheels, little bits we can still work on. I’m sure we can do better tomorrow in the repechage.”

The reigning Olympic Champions in this boat class, Martin and Valent Sinkovic won their heat and Valent was pleased with their performance;

“It felt much better definitely than all the season. We knew we are going better, we did a lot of improvement on our technique and we just waited for the race to see how it would be. Today it was really good and we can’t wait for the next race.”

Although they won the pair in Tokyo, they have been in the double for part of the last Olympiad before returning to the pair. Valent commented on the switch;

“We weren’t that happy with two years spent in the double after the Tokyo Olympics. As we get older we lack a little bit of explosiveness and power. We thought maybe go back to the pair; (in the) pair you can do without explosiveness I think but in the double it’s hard to do it.

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Paris 2024 is the last time that lightweight double sculls will be included in the Olympic programme and crews are understandably keen to secure the title as the last ever Olympic Champion meaning competition is even fiercer than ever before.

Great Britain are looking for redemption in the lighweight women’s double scull after they missed out on a medal in Tokyo by 0.01 seconds and Imogen Grant thinks their experience since will really help;

 “I can’t think of any other crew in the event that’s experienced as many different types of races as we have. Whatever wind direction or other crews that we have to race, when we come to the start line there’s almost always another race that we can reference and say, ‘in this race we did this and this is what happened’. We can take confidence from that.”

Whilst Great Britain looked impressive, it was New Zealand’s Shannon Cox and Jackie Kiddle that clocked the fastest time across the heats, racing in the third. They found themselves up against the French Olympic silver medalists but found that the noise from the French supporters gave them a boost too!

“One thing we definitely weren’t expecting was just the atmosphere of racing against a French crew. The noise was something that we have never experienced on the water. That was both a little bit of a shock but also a fantastic thing to experience. It gave us a bit of a lift definitely. Usually we would experience that in the last 500 metres so to have that for a whole k (kilometre) was unreal.

“You feel like you’re at the Olympics. I didn’t expect it to feel like that. Personally, I expected it to feel like another world champs, but everybody’s upped their game and the atmosphere’s just unreal.”

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Despite a fast start from China in the women’s four, Great Britain came through to take the win in heat one and post the fastest time. Double Olympic Champion Helen Glover always had faith in her crew;

“We just stayed in our boat, stuck to our plan, and trusted that that would bring us out through the halfway point in the position we wanted to be in.”

Meanwhile, crew mate Esme Booth commented on how much experience Glover brings to the boat;

“It’s an amazing thing to go out and race with Helen, she’s got so much experience. During the training and the lead-in, she’s really helped us tick all the boxes in everything that we need to do. We felt pretty prepared going out there, we knew our race plan, we knew what we wanted to do.”

The second heat of the women’s four was won by the reigning World Champions from the Netherlands. However, the defending Olympic Champion nation Australia finished fourth in that heat and will need to go through the repechage to try and get into the final. Speaking after the race, Jean Mitchell said;

“Today we had a bit of a tough race. We would be lying if we didn’t say we were a little disappointed with how we went. We just have a few things we need to tweak going forward into the repechage so we’ll review the race, see where we can go better.”

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Australia narrowly missed out on needing to race the repechage in the men’s four too as they finished narrowly ahead of France, with USA taking the winning spot in that heat. The first heat had been won by New Zealand with Great Britain also qualifying. Some of the Kiwi crew come with experience of winning Olympic gold in the men’s eight in Tokyo, including Tom Murray, who was pleased with their performance today;

 “A dream start. Get out there, get the lungs going, get the legs going, get the initial nerves out of the way.”

Great Britain’s David Ambler recognised the experience in the New Zealand crew;

“Obviously, there’s a quick crew there in the Kiwis (New Zealand – who finished first in the heat), along with the rest of the field to be honest. We were happy with it, we’ve been building through the season step by step. 

“There’s obviously some work to do, three days to do it (prepare for the final), but overall a positive result – one we’ll take. We’re through to the final, that’s the main thing, and got to go again on Thursday.”