Wibble from the World Championships, Friday 2nd September 2005
This has been an odd worlds. Plenty of potential 'situations' being scared up, then seemingly disappearing without trace. On the eve of the first finals day, and because I've been a bit busy to fill in the background so far this week, here goes with the first proper 'Q Wibble' of the year.
First up, the ticklish subject of typhoons. Several of the British camp, when us hacks arrived last Saturday, expressed disappointment that 'their' typhoon (Typhoon 'Mawar', meaning 'rose' in Malaysian) had changed its mind and headed to Tokyo to put a few city districts out of action, instead of making good on its threats to blow a hoolie round their hotels. I blame the Japanese - instead of panicking and throwing a complete fit, they calmly packed up the entire course, stored the boats in what is now the media room, and sat down with suitably Buddhist-like calm to await the worst. Of course it didn't deliver - after that, what self-respecting typhoon would want to play to an audience apparently incapable of being shocked?
Of course that isn't really the end of the story. With 20 a year, it is not surprising that the next typhoon in the family (this one called 'Nabi') is already on the way. This wreaked a bit of casual havoc in the Philippines a few days ago, and is now heading north-west at an octogenarian crawl. It may well collide with mainland Japan early next week, but probably only the south-west cities such as Nagasaki, though most southern coastal towns of Japan have been warned to expect storm-surge of up to 3 metres in the next 48 hours. The weather around 'Gifu' is already weird and we're inland, so it doesn't make much difference.
Slight aside - where are we? It's not really Gifu, which has been described to me as the 'third city of Japan' but is quite some distance away from the course. Gifu Prefecture is the region, but we're perched on the lower corner of where it meets two other prefectures (Mie and Aichi), and the city nearest the course is actually Kaizu. To make it even more complex, most of the rowers/supporters/press are staying in one of Ogaki, Kuwana and Nagoya cities, each of which is at least 20 and often 40 minutes from the course, all in different directions. Socialising can be quite hard work (so it's a good thing we've come to work, innit?) The course itself is on the Nagaragawa (trans: 'Nagara River'), one of three broad rivers flowing directly north-south into the massive bay just south of Nagoya. They're drainage rivers, so it was not to be expected that their stream would cut to zero in a semi-rainy season, although they can control the flow a little, enough to let the level rise during racing and then pull through water afterwards. But the strange bit is the climate. The valley of these three very closely adjacent rivers is overlooked by distant hills, but has on-shore winds blowing in from southerly Nagoya, combined with substantial breezes from the north, where the inland sea and a large natural lake have a big impact. The combination leads to what feels like a "breathing" atmosphere. In the mornings so far the wind has largely been tail (north-south and with the stream) but in the afternoon it turns cross or head (against the stream), making things very bumpy for the poor adaptive crews. In the evening it often 'breathes out' again, back into the Nagoya area bay.
This is why we've had good conditions and fast times during the early part of the sessions, particularly Tuesday to Thursday, when several records fell with the help of 8-10 seconds worth of stream. Later on it's usually been still or starting to turn, so the Olympic crews (which in any case have been more competitive for the last 9 years) have had more trouble cracking world bests. Today the wind was more cross than it's been for a while, and very faint to start with, so people were 15-30 seconds off the top speeds. We've got so used to record-breaking, it felt surprisingly disappointing! With such complex weather, it's no surprise the forecasts are often wrong. I like the Japan Meteorological Agency best - I've linked to the page where you can run the most recent weather in the region, and then on for 6 hours of forecast. This confirms that the Nagara and its sister river Kisogawa had a bundle of rain dropped on them upstream and slightly to the north-east this evening, so the stream might be a tidge up tomorrow for the first finals. To check the stream, FISA are sending out a boat every morning, with amongst others a member of the FISA Athletes' Commission on, to measure the stream at several points and across all the lanes. To date everyone has been happy it's all fair, and while the stream did rise after a ton of water fell locally on Tuesday night, it didn't get too bad or too uneven. Another potential problem avoided. There's a chance the wind might stay head for a while now, until the forecast thunderstorms on Sunday [so that'll be a change then, running the quads and eights while it's p*ssing it down, again!]. If that happens they can always do what they planned if the stream was uneven - to switch to the echelon pattern of lanes, putting the top semifinalists/heat winners at the more sheltered edge.
Enough serious stuff. Some highlights so far -
* Being nearer to the International Date Line than I have ever been, so that most of the hard work gets done while you lot of slobs are in bed. Which leads to ringing the Telegraph sports desk at what is 11pm my time, asking them if they've subbed my copy yet (of course not, they've only just got back from a lengthy lunch) and then cackling while telling them about the number of beers I've already had time to fit in.
* Ollie R and Sybrand T playing competitive free-association one-linering at 7am over breakfast. A funnier start to the day cannot be had.
* Being nearly sent mad or deafened by one particular supporter. I'll be tactful. She's from a heavily industrialised nation, and has blagged FISA Family tickets - or had done at the start of the week. A parent, I'd guess from the fervency and dress. When her crews are racing she yells the three letters of her nation's abbreviated name in encouragement, on a rising shriek, ending with the final vowel rhyming with "why?" at top decibels and such a high pitch you can barely hear what it is - it's just a screech. More irritating even than the smell of the Russian rowers' feet on the bus coming back from the course. Today she was shifted further down into the pleb supporters' grandstand. I think the NF presidents had had enough of her.
* The Russian men's eight. Bottom halves tracksuited. Top halves covered in the hotel-issue kimonos Japanese expect to be lent as pyjamas. Which come down to about the bottom of their ribs. Lovely stuff.
* Some brilliant person lending our coach driver a copy of the 'White Album' to play over his in-bus CD system this morning on the trip to the course, resulting in the mellowest of journeys to work while gliding past rice-paddies, Japanese industrial estates and billions of small and large rivers.
* The lovely Belarussian rower who saves me a seat on the same bus each morning - I think it's because in the tiny built-for-Japanese seats, he prefers to sit next to someone who doesn't have a 48-inch hip measurement.
* White gloves on all Japanese officials. Much bowing. Watching several members of the press corps tackling sushi with chopsticks...
* Learning my room number in Japanese (a rather appropriate hachiichi-zero-kyu) and then annoying Messrs Dodd, Spurrier, Treffers, Hewitt, Trooster and Rosenbladt by being given my key first by charmed receptionists.
* Meeting parents of Olympians in the stands. Apart from several I'd met before, new faces to me who have the good taste to be occasional Rowing Service readers include Biff Simmons' family, Stevie Williams' mum and dad, and the father of the Evers-Swindells twins (a tall and very calm man).
* Discovering that Di Ellis has the ring-tone on her Japanese mobile set to "I vow to thee my country" (aka 'Jupiter') which she says brings tears to her eyes if she hears enough bars of it. Wondering if I can blag the use of a phone and ring her repeatedly on it until she blubs.
* Finding out that strolling next to an athlete, interviewing them while they do their cool-down walk, is a good way to chill (literally) as the air around their ice-jacket really does get colder!
* Tucking in behind Messrs Grobler, Thommo, Tanner, Banks and the other 'BIRO' heavyweights to get a bit of draft benefit in the bicycling race-following peloton. It's amazing - I can even keep up with an eights' race that way on a rented Japanese bike. They really hunt as a pack - today it was Tommo nipping round the posse to each of the best viewpoints to film the British lightweight crews going past while Robin Williams followed, and yesterday Robin did it for Tommo's crews. Other coaches recorded 100m times and still more took their turn riding with the oppo's sem-final to add yet more information to the databank.
* Seeing the devoted bottle-boys using large fishing nets to scoop the abandoned drinks bottles out of the river at the start. One has become so deft he can usually catch the bottle chucked out of the boat before it hits the river. Give that man a lacrosse stick - he'd be a world champion.
* Aforementioned lunatics Treffers and Rosenbladt cackling like witches, plotting some new nefarious photographic or reporting iniquity at the back of the media centre.
* Listening to FISA wriggle out of questions on lightweight eights, stream and world best times. Of which more later. And that's not even mentioning the rumble going on at the moment about adaptive eligibility. It's had its share of controversial fun, this regatta, made more amusing by the fact that the FISA Congress hasn't even happened yet.
Flipping 'eck it's nearly tomorrow. Night night...
Rachel Quarrell, at the 2005 Worlds.