Rowing chiefs have brushed off fears that the Olympic regatta could face days of delays after Sunday’s entire racing programme was postponed following dangerously high winds which caused two boats to capsize before the start.
Britain’s most celebrated rower, Sir Steve Redgrave, even raised the possibility of a doomsday scenario that echoed the Athens Olympics of 1896, when the whole rowing programme was cancelled. But Matt Smith, the executive director of world rowing’s governing body, Fisa, insisted they had “tricks up their sleeve” which he hoped would see them catch up with the race schedule by .
Smith was speaking after the second day’s action – due to start at 8.30am local time – was postponed for an hour, then another hour, before being called off at 10.17am because of the wrong type of wind on the course. Yet Smith sounded confident that the weather, and the sticky scheduling situation, would blow over in the coming days. Smith said: “The north-westerly that we have is not the usual wind that we have at this time of year. It normally starts north and turning to be easterly or south-easterly like we had at the test event this time last year.
“But if you talk to the old rowers, they know this can last two or three days and it is one of the worst directions because it comes through that gap in the hills and comes right down to the 1,000m mark. It is our bad luck. However we are old and experienced in staging regattas. We have a lot of tricks up our sleeve, a lot of contingency plans. We could even have two rounds on the same day and, with nine days, including Sunday morning, we are confident we are ready for nearly anything the weather can throw at us.”
Saturday’s vicious crosswinds had turned the water so choppy it led a Serbian boat to capsize and other rowers to claim they had faced the worst conditions they had ever encountered. But the wind of up to 15 metres per second was even stronger. Not only did it trouble the rowers during their warm-up but it also blew the buoy cables that mark the six individual lanes way out of kilter.
It led to Redgrave, a gold medallist at five Olympics, admitting that conditions were among the worst he had ever seen. “Boats are taking in so much water just in the warm-up,” he said. “I was speaking to Miroslava Knapkova, the Czech reigning who is the Olympic champion, and she said on Saturday it was awful. Her boat was full of water before she even got to the start. If our Olympic champions are struggling, what are we doing for developing nations? In Athens in 1896 the whole rowing programme was cancelled. But that would be a disaster.”
Redgrave also called for Fisa to ensure that every possible measure was implemented to ensure rowers were safe when the competition finally resumed. “It would be very unlikely that Fisa would have chosen this,” he said. “But safety comes first. Fairness comes after that. It’s unrowable. And there wasn’t enough safety out there.
“With the Serbian pair turning over on Saturday, you can just about deal with that,” he added. “If you have two boats that turn over, that is stretching it. We have six boats racing. Two races on the course at one stage. If we have a gust like we just experienced and have sinkages, that is a lot of people out on the water with not enough rescue boats to get them off. This is breaching the safety recommendations.”
Britain’s double Olympic champion James Cracknell also agreed it was the right decision to cancel Sunday’s races but warned there could be a “world of problems” ahead.
“Rowers are not stupid. They will have watched Saturday’s rowing, where the Serbian crew capsized, and they know that, if people were falling in, World Rowing aren’t going to send them out with the conditions worse today,” he said. “It’s more what happens now. Monday’s forecast is the same and, if they cancel again, you will have the prospect of repechages and semi-finals on the same day. It creates a world of problems. As a rower, you just have to deal with it. It’s the same for everyone and you can’t let it affect you.”
However, the British rowing performance director, David Tanner, said he had every faith in Fisa to get the regatta finished on time. “I’m not saying this will happen but the last resort is to race everyone in a time trial. Fisa is allowed to reduce the distance if it needs to, so there are contingencies. They have never been used – although once at the world junior championships in Athens which was the test event for the Games there [in 2004], they had to be reduced to 1,000m because we had a massive tailwind.”
Organisers confirmed that spectators would be offered refunds and said there were plenty of spare tickets available for day’s action.
