The U.S. men’s pairs had a very competitive heat this morning, with just 0.43 seconds separating first and fourth place. It was so close that a photo finish between the four teams from Spain, New Zealand, Ireland and Switzerland was shown on screen.
Tomorrow, the American men will compete against last year’s world champions, along with the Swiss athletes.
row2k – On paper did you guys see it being a really tough heat?
Oliver Babb – Yes, I think so. It’s definitely a tough competition, but the boats are fast at the Olympics. We tried to race, but we weren’t at our best. Luckily, we have another chance tomorrow.
row2k – Having four boats in the preliminaries isn’t ideal, but on the other hand you’ve seen all the boats you want to face in the finals. Did you learn anything from that?
Oliver Babb – First of all, we will be playing against different teams tomorrow so I will talk to my coaches and make a plan.
row2k – After all the time you’ve been training, how did it feel to finally race and row to the finish line?
Billy Bender – I’m super excited, this is probably the longest preparation I’ve ever done for a regatta so I definitely felt prepared.
row2k – You two have been together longer than last year’s pair, what do you feel you can work on now that you’ve won trials earlier and are able to put in the work?
Billy Bender – We had more time than usual to tinker, so we put telemetry on the boat. This was the first time we’ve approached it like this. We looked at the telemetry, made changes, and saw how it looked on the video and how it looked on the telemetry. It was an iterative process to find the speed. Usually, with a speed order, we only have two weeks and don’t have a lot of time to tinker with the boat and look at the power curves. It was definitely a new and fun experience, and I think it was productive.
row2k – Tell us a little bit about the trajectory of that process.
Oliver Babb – At least in practice we’re heading in the right direction, but racing is obviously a different beast and mindset, so hopefully the tapering will work and we’ll have a really good feeling going into the race tomorrow.
row2k – Last question: how much faster do you think the Dartmouth team would have been if you had both been there at the same time?
Oliver Babb – I think pretty fast. Rowing with Bender at Dartmouth a year too early is definitely a big regret of mine.
Full results from today’s racing can be found here and for more information on spectating the Olympic regatta, check out row2k’s Olympic resources page.
