Olympic countdown/Sam Lynch's diary: The inferno, or some place like it but with wind. Sweden. Mother of God. Always thought Sweden was civilised. Volvo. Ikea and Abba. What could go wrong? Well, we're crawling away from this place.
Some people lose their hearts in San Francisco. We're leaving our blood and guts in Stromsted. We're headed for two days' rest and recreation in Gothenburg. That's the theory. We know in our hearts though that Gothenburg will just be a time for getting some energy back. For recovering. We're whupped.
We have two days off. Just to dust ourselves down and gather ourselves. We are dead leaving Stromsted. Dead.
It's Friday and we've just got on the train and we want to sleep. We know that we have gotten as much out of Stromsted as it is possible to get. Maybe the reverse is true too. Stromsted has got a lot out of us.
As we leave, the train passes down by the bottom end of the lake. Gags (Gearóid Towey) takes out his little digital camera and switches to video mode. He films us leaving the bottom end of the lake behind. Just to make sure it's happening, to make sure we're leaving it behind. We'll watch it later. Just to make sure it's true.
These past few weeks have been as unexpected as a mugging. Thor (Nilsen) got us here and jumped us! After Lucerne we had a week at home. Gags was sick but recovering. Home life was good. It was relaxed and cool and we suffered a dangerously high exposure to normal living and ordinary perspective.
We got to thinking that Sweden would be nice because as the season wears on the volume of work goes down. Doesn't it? Of course it does. So we were at home and thinking that with the Games getting closer and closer we'd be swaddled in cotton wool more and more.
Even though we'd be doing intense work we'd not be doing the sort of stuff that grinds you down and leaves you in dust on the floor. Sweden would be nice and when Sweden was over we'd go to Croatia and that would be luxury.
How wrong can two men be. We've spent the bones of a month here now. Thor said pretty soon after we'd arrived that we were going back to high-volume training and (surprise, boys!) we were going to be lifting weights twice a week as well.
He felt we'd lost a bit of strength during the year. He's right but it's hard, hard, hard.
The quality of what we do at this time of the year is higher. It has to be. That's what we've worked for. Everything we do in the boat is really high quality. And it hurts.
It's what we need though. Now, on the train, chugging away, we know it. We have trained as well as we could have.
Stromsted is a small little town, about the same size as Blessington. It's a seaside place but at this time of the year the weather has been unnatural. Everything comes with wind. Wind all day. And the lake is a dogleg - 4k straight and then a 90-degree bend which, imaginatively, we call "The Corner".
We warm up on the journey to The Corner and then there's 3k of lake around The Corner. We've done all the work up there. This meant that as "a bonus" (another Thor quote) we'd get to cool down with a 4k row home. Into the wind.
Every day we'd dread rowing home. Every day finished with the most morose 4k rowed by men since Crean and Shackleton and the boys rowed from Elephant Island to South Georgia. We'd settle in and row for 25 minutes. Not a word spoken.
Sometimes despite myself I'd find myself enjoying it. 2k gone already, I'd think to myself. I have a saintly gift for self-flagellation.
Coming here has been so important. When Gags got ill in Lucerne all the cards got thrown up in the air. We came home and laid off for a little while. Gags was getting good news about the retreat of whatever bug it was that he had but Stromsted was the first place we got into a boat together. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a very nervy time. He'd got the all clear and everything was okay but to go out and pull a stroke in anger, it's a different story.
It's not our habit to have endless formal meetings and to thrash things to death with each other. It's a good relationship which doesn't require a whole lot of talking. The Irish four who will compete in Athens get together all the time and talk and discuss their outings and it works for them. I've been in that situation too. Crews talk and everyone has input.
Gags and I have a different routine. There is no point making more of something than we need to. Gags's progress would be down to wellness and confidence in being well.
In medicine we read about these things. They say there's two components to the healing process. Your body heals and then there's the psychological part. You have to believe that it has healed.
I got an achilles injury last October, a bad one. And it niggled and nagged like a debt collector. On and on. There were days when I couldn't walk on it. I couldn't do anything. Worse, I was stupid. Instead of taking the rest I needed I went and did poor training for two weeks. Swimming and all this mullarkey. It was frustrating.
I'm bad when I'm injured. I force things. Some days I was hopping about the place. Anything to keep going.
Finally I took 10 days off. We were going to camp on the 2nd of November. I hadn't rowed or run. It was make or break. I said to the physio, I'm going to training camp next week. The physio's eyebrows shot up. He asked two things. How long? Will there be a physio there? I said two things. Six weeks. No. Well, said the physio, you won't be able to make it.
And with my back to the wall now I tell him that I've been fannying about for three weeks and it's November so it's not too important but it's getting to the stage where it is going to be very important. The injury isn't getting any better with rest so I am going to try the other way. I'll ride through it.
So I went. There were days of hobbling. Evenings of icing it. Hours of rubbing in anti- inflammatories. One day I woke up and it was gone. I couldn't run though. I started running in January and it took me weeks before I actually believed that I could run again. My body was fine but there's that mental component all the time. You have to get to the stage where you'll train with abandon. You can't have concern about how your body will react. They say nothing handles like a hire car. That's how we have to treat our bodies. Like hire cars.
The first few days we are cautious enough about each other. I'm watching Gags. He's aware I'm watching him.
Maybe we should talk it all through but we both believe there's nothing to be gained down that path. What will be will be. So I ask once or twice a day if he's good, if everything is alright, and he says yeah. Eventually I stop asking.
We have enough tension. There's people at home writing about us since Lucerne. Writing us off. Little snippets from discussion boards reach our ears. It's funny if there's a bad or malicious line written anywhere there's always somebody who'll tell you about it. Olympic crisis! Gags pulls out! We have been sort of aware of that little storm in our world. Neither of us is prepared to add anything to it so it lies between us. How are you feeling? We'll work on this today, yeah?
It's funny, these things that are written about you. You figure quickly what the angle is, who is coming from where. You dismiss it but you still resent having had to take the moment of time to consider it. And everyone takes the time, no matter what they say.
There's a school of thought in sport that you can use those things to motivate you. Cut and paste lines or clip news cuttings and look at them and get steam coming out of your ears and get motivated. You can't. Negative energy will only get you so far.
In 1998 when I was in the singles for the first time I was carrying around a whole bundle of grievances on my back. I felt hard done by and treated badly and that was how I'd ended up in the singles, broodingaway. It wasn't wholly true.
The perspective of the other people was valid also. They would have said that I just wasn't good enough.
But I went about using this perceived slight as motivation for my first six or seven months in the singles. I was training like a demon. Then I'd break down. Get sick. I'd stop. While I was stopped I'd be chastising myself. Got to keep going. Got to prove something to these people. I'm better than this. I'm better than them.
Bad days on the lake in Blessington. I'd been stubborn. I'd been refusing lifts from the rowing clubs in Dublin. I so badly wanted a lift in a nice warm car but would not permit myself to go down and say so. Instead I'd get the bus from Wood Quay. The 66a. Out via Tallaght. Two hours and a walk of a mile and a half from the bus stop to the lake.
I was living in Blackrock and leaving the house at seven, getting home at seven in the evening, having got two buses and two darts. I'd train on my own, twice. Walk on my own the mile and a half up to the village for lunch. Back again.
Absolutely absurd but sheer stubbornness and negative motivation kept me going.
Finally one Sunday evening in March or April, I can't remember which, having made all this effort I was out on the lake and rowing along and I realised that I was really enjoying myself. I discovered that if I was honest with myself I would choose to be here regardless of what anyone else wanted.
And suddenly I let the anger go. My perspective changed. My motivation changed. My actions didn't change but the reason I was doing them changed and I began doing it better.
So ever since whenever there's criticism or sniping I take a moment to weigh it up and move on. You can't care about anyone else. It's about how good or bad a rower I am. Not how good I am in anyone else's eyes. I learned from those six or seven months. I don't use other people as motivation.
That goes for the sloppy stuff too. If I win the Olympics my mum and dad will be really happy. That's great. I'll be pleased but I'm not doing it to put a smile on their faces. Nor am I doing it to prove something to everyone else who said that I couldn't do it. I'm doing it because it's within my compass. It's a challenge.
In the old hierarchy of human needs I'm hoping I'll be self-actualised on the Sunday of the Olympic final. And right back down to the bottom on Monday looking for sex and food!
Gags seems as confident as anyone has a right to in his body and after a week in Sweden we forget that there was ever this roadblock in the year. Thor has given us the option of cutting the sessions if we need to. We haven't had to do that. We went into a full programme deciding that if Gags hadn't recovered we'd know sooner.
We've both been nervous. So has Thor. The worry that the bug would linger has been intense. Thor could see it in the boat. The two of us with this eagerness for everything to be okay and perhaps overcompensating or watching small things a little too much. But now it's behind us.
On the first Saturday morning we did a full and savage session. He's fine. It's a relief. Book closed.
Croatia
Valhalla. Well, zagreb. We get up at seven. We leave at nine. We're getting used to what will be Athens time. In Athens things will be a little earlier so we'll make the adjustment, set our circadian rhythms, etc.
We're in Zagreb. The Olympic Council has been excellent. Nothing spared. Each crew has a car of its own.
We leave at nine, down for 9.15. On the water. Lunch at 12. Leave at five. Dinner at seven. There's a big shopping centre to hang around in. We have a nice rhythm to the days.
Zagreb was where I won my first world medal. I won a silver, or lost a gold, whichever way you want to put it, back in 2000.
We arrived at the airport and they still stamp your passport here. So I handed mine in and got it back and glanced at it in that way that you do because even though you pretend it's nothing, a stamp on a passport is a nice thing and it struck me as odd. Stamped on the 26th of July 2004. The only other stamp in my passport is the 26th of July 2000.
The same country. The same airport. Just a little weird if you believe in those things. Four years to the day since I flew in for the world championships.
For the first couple of days here there were quite a few people about. It's the season for blazers. Everyone wants the Olympics to be special. The four came in off the water after a 12k paddle the other day and three people were there on the slip to meet them.
"How was that?" "Uh. Okay. It's a 12k paddle at camp." We play it cool, laugh about the fuss, but big races are different. We get our 15 minutes of fame for one thing.
I was telling Niall O'Toole this morning about 2000 in Zagreb. There's a main lake and a warm-up lake. For the worlds you warmed up and then rowed to the start. Unfortunately the warm-up lake is also a swimming area for the general public. I was down at the warm-up lake doing my final piece before the start of the final and in the swimming area there were 25 supporters from Limerick cheering me on. I was in good shape mentally but if I'd been nervous I'd have been in serious trouble hearing all those Limerick accents.
You have to be prepared for anything. There's a Norwegian guy on the scene who's known to us all by his nickname: Nito. He's in the double in Athens. He still laughs over the story of the start in Seville in 2002.
The race is along the Guadalquivir and there's a huge Irish crowd in the grandstand. I'm paddling up slowly towards the start and I can hear the voices. "Go on, Sam." "Kill , aw Lynch"
Silence. I stop and give the finger. Paddle on.
General approval from the grandstand. Feeling good. Good enough to go on and win. Otherwise I wouldn't be telling the story. And neither would Nito anytime we meet.
This time around Zagreb has been standing out for us like some kind of Valhalla. Get to Zagreb and the living really will be easy, we've said. Is it ever! 34k a day for the next three days. We've been doing 18k every morning there is no wind and the intensity is just for short periods. Next week pynw There's still a few sessions on the programme that make you wince. something. They hurt but they don't wear you down.
This morning for instance we had a session. The cast first of all. There was ourselves, the Irish pair and the Irish four. And two south Africans, a pair, the Swiss quad and a Swiss single sculler.
We went out and did four times 2,000 metres. For the last >seconds' lead, we got 15 seconds on the four, who got 15 on.>We did it three times that way. With 200 metres to go all the crews had bunched up and the handicap had been eroded. There was a mad dash >one a fight.
10 the spare man for Athens, the four, ourselves the double, Thor and Aidan Woods, our physio.
It's hard but good. There's no tension now. Crews are sorted and selected and everyone is motivated. We all want it to be better.
We are all counting the days down. All making the most of this session. It's great. There's an intensity.
The world could be crashing around our ears right now and we wouldn't know. Money trouble. Family trouble. Girlfriend trouble. It's all sidelined. Rowing, resting, sleeping. Those are the things which are important.
Back at th first world championship we went to we spent every minute talking about rowing, worrying about rowing. Now we sit down at our table and we talk about everything except rowing.
We're looking at these ads and we have to tell ourselves that what's on TV is what we're going to. On an intellectual level we are saying we're going to the Olympics. And that's fine.
On another level we're going to a rowing competition to compete against the same people we've ben rowing against for years. What's different is so many people descending and thinking they can make some difference to your performance by being around in the last two weeks.
>People lose perspective sometimes. THE OLYMPICS! We were laughing. Imagine the day the Ffour come in and were are met byat the slip onby the delegation and said told >that in fact it wasn;'t great. Very tired in fact. They'd'd be airlifted Enter>tain>You find yourself wondering about it all and then remember you've been doing this for years.
In Athens we know as much as we'd know for any other competition. Room. Food. Travel. There's a mountain of pamphlets and leaflets and stuff. I haven't read them. When I need to know I will.
Familiarity is a weapon when you get to the olympics. You have to keep things calm and low key. Athens is run in the same format as for the worlds last year. It's a format we all know. They just roll it out.
Our final is 8.30 in the morning. That could be 6.30 back home. We'll be up at a quarter to five. We want to be up three hours early.
At this stage the field is very tight. Only point four of a second separated the first three in Lucerne. I think everyone is a little better and the Italians aren't as good. The Poles , the only is that we have beaten them twice.
Even in Lucerne we were fast. In the rep we lost by 0.4 of a second to the Italians. We both raced. We were 99 per cent rather than 100 per
cent. No good crew will underestimate us. And to my mind we're doing the best training programme in the world. What anyone else is doing I don't know. Just that good rowers are good rowers. For instance, last year the Poles went to Lucerne and lost. They came 17th. By the worlds they had risen to silver-medal position. Yet no rows have approached the world
championship thinking to themselves that the Poles were fodder.
We're beginning at this stage to sort out small details like sleep and what days we'll deal with media, etc. Last year we had a problem with
waking up. I set the alarm on my mobile but didn't realise you could switch the phone off when it is set to alarm.
Four in the morning the day of the world final some guy rings me on the mobile. Drunk. I hang up. As soon as I have the head down he rings
again. It was our alarm as well so we were afraid to leave it
Who's on the other end. Just some guy who has decided it would be great fun to ring me at 4 a.m. on the morning of the final. He's a Galway fella.
I'll get him. I've got the number in my phone. Still have it there. Not letting it go. That's it then. So close to Athens we can smell it. Reminding ourselves every day of why we do this. At home, because myself and my brother are
both rowers, Dad has ended up with a modest shrine to the lads in the house. Medals and pots and stuff. Dad came to me two years ago and says
I've found it.
Found what? What? The gold medal from Seville. Didn’t even know you’d lost it, Dad.He’d lost it. He was paranoid that I’d know he lost it. But for me at my age the worries you carry are different and the sense that sport gives you is different.
That’s the nub of it. It’s not the medal. That’s for looking at when your old and on a rocking chair and wondering where all the years went. It’s the feeling. It’s the sense of being the best. Better than anyone else. Better than you have ever been.We’re not quite in Valhalla but getting there.
