Hillary Saeger is in the lightweight women's quad scull, LW4x, as a member of the US Rowing Team competing at the World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia.
Here is what she wrote in her log a few weeks ago :
>If you are reading this you are probably surprised that I am logging but don't worry I have been very busy with training ;) I have been training in the LW4x to go to worlds this year in Slovenia. I am sitting in bow seat and am very comfortable there since that is where I sat in 2009 and most of last year. We were in DC training for a couple of weeks and then came to Princeton to get ready for the Worlds Trials. Our pieces are pretty fast and are optimistic about the boat. We had to race a quad from Philly to make it onto the Senior Team. We were next to them off the start and then they hung with us for about 100-200m but then we started to move on them. By the 500m we were bow to stern on them and continued to walk. We won the race and were then named onto the National Rowing Team to go to Slovenia, Bled for the World Rowing Championships! I think this year will be particularly hard since it is a Pre-Olympic year so I am hoping my quad will fine tune some things so we can be ready to compete against some tough competition.
Now comes the harder part where there is much scrambling from organizers for information and having to get ready to go in about two weeks! Once again they have asked each non-Olympic boat to pay their own way to go to Worlds and unfortunately it is going to cost each athlete over $5000 to go!!! I hate asking, but given the fact that there is no way I can actually pay for all of this it would REALLY be appreciated if you know of any other rowers or anyone would like to support us would like to help support either my boat to go to Worlds in Slovenia or just me at the website: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/steve-dani/f... . I am just trying to get the word out there and at this point I think anything would help :) <
Two members of this boat, Hillary and Lindsey, won Bronze at the 2009 WRC. Competition is tougher this year as Hill states.
Hill's first race is Mon, Aug 29, 11:12 AM Slovenia time (5:12 AM EDT I think - 6 hours behind). Looks like there will be live results coverage. Here's a compact race schedule for the week.
I am super excited for our race tomorrow! Due to other boats leaving to much wake from the previous race they are increasing the time between races so we are now at 11:42 am here. Gonna be a good race!
I think the first boat automatically qualifies for the final, while the others will race again on Wednesday morning. But I'm not 100% sure. They had the 5th best time overall (between the 2 heats).
Hillary's boat finished 2nd in her semi heat this morning (4 AM EDT!), and they had the 3rd fastest time across both heats (10 boats total). It looks like the top 2 boats in each heat go to the A-final, so they are in!! Results of all their races so far are here. Also a PDF version of today's results so far.
Light Women's Quad
Australia, Germany, China and the USA went through in these two reps, which really didn't feature any significant challenges from the non-qualifiers. I spoke to the quad after the racing.
Interview with the US light women's quad:
Coach Steve Dani, on going through the reps, and how the race played out:
"We raced at trials, but we've never had this type of competition, so I think it was good to have one more race before the final. We tried to be more aggressive in this race, and I think we did that in the first 1000, and hopefully they can put together the whole package in the final.
"We might have been a little too aggressive, as there was a little jumped slide on the first stroke, but I think finding that happy medium will be the goal for the final. We'll take it easy this afternoon, then go out twice tomorrow, then just once on Saturday. They're good rowers; two were in the quad in 09 and got bronze, and one was in the U23 lightweight quad in 09 that got silver. "
US stroke Katherine Robinson on their trip through reps
"It was definitely valuable. We didn't execute in the heat the way that we wanted to, so we realized there was a lot of work to do, so were glad for a second race to kind of practice another element to our racing strategy."
How do you make a change in a couple days' time?
"We are a fairly experienced crew, but we also haven't rowed together that long. So improving the race would be just deciding together on some moves, some strategy, some particular calls that really get everyone's head in the right place, and in a place to make a difference wherever we are with the other crews. Making that positive change is definitely helpful for bring things together, making it easier to decide on a goal, and execute it."
Steve said your start was maybe a little too aggressive; how do you keep that on track?
"I think just cleaning up things, and making sure that even though you want to be as aggressive as possible, you don't want that to get in the way of correct rowing, I guess I would say, or the most effective and efficient rowing. In the heat maybe we didn't dial it up enough, and I think this time we experimented on the other side of the equation, and now we're going to tighten all the loose ends and wind it up to the right degree."
I was so anxious about them making the finals, but they really have it together. So positive, looking forward to the racing.
Good joke Eddie, but to be truthful, it's Hill's job to steer the boat, so it's up to her to look ahead.
Yeah, awesome! Here's the photo:
They were rowing so fast their oars got all bent out of shape! And their boat was physically shorter due to relativistic length contraction.
So, am I correct in guessing that the camera constantly captures one vertical row of pixels that's located at the finish line? And that the picture is then assembled from these vertical rows, so that moving from left to right moves forward in time, rather than in space? That would explain the shapes of the oars, I think, and the length discrepancy would also imply that Hilly's boat was moving that much faster than the other boat at that time (assuming they're the same length).
Yes, it's a line-scan camera with a CCD that has a single line (or 1-D array) of pixels. The top boat is certainly longer because it is going more slowly - but mostly at the back end, so it looks like they crossed the line at about the same speed, but slowed down appreciably after the last rower crossed the line.
The GB quad really controlled this race, showing almost no cracks in the armor as they posted the fastest times in all of the first three 500s. China chased but could not get through, as the US pulled through a fading Italian quad to win by 1/100th of a second; check out the finish line photo here.
Interview with the US LW4x:
Did you know that you had medalled?
Hillary Saeger: no, it was so close, we heard the beep, so I had no idea which was which, so I'm just looking at the screen--and then I saw us come up on it, and I thought 'is it gonna say third?" and then it was like third place and I was like YESSS!!!
Question: can you tell us about these last 20, 15 strokes?
Hillary: I think someone yelled something, and we just went, I was like 'okay here we go!!'
Question: Someone in the boat yelled something?
Hillary: I don't know!
Katherine Robinson: it was like a heart and soul kind of move. There's nothing else after this, you don't have to think about anything else. It was very much in the moment, getting the blades in, and leaving nothing.
Hillary: The last two races definitely helped us figure out what to do, and in that last 250, I was like 'sit up, keep it clean, go strong.' And that's all we needed to do.
Question: when you were a little down, did you think well, we can do this?
Nicole Dinion: we were at about the 600 and I saw we were walking on Italy. We were in fourth place, and I said 'get that medal,' and we just started moving, and kept moving, and kept moving. And the last 20 strokes, we pulled it up.
Question: One one hundredth of a second was the margin.
Hillary: that's what we were going for! (all laugh). We just wanted to give you something fun to watch, and we had fun too.
Interview with Kathryn Twyman, three seat of the GB LW4x
Did you expect to have the lead that you had?
Kathryn: No, so we did a little number-crunching from the heats and the reps, so we knew we had our work cut out for us in that first 500, so we knew we just had to go out hard and strong and have faith that we could maintain it. You know the adrenaline you get from the race would keep us going.
Andrea Dennis (GBR) -- Gold
"We just planned to do a good time. And we did!! I was saying GO GO GO and we were able to win."
Jing Liu (CHN) -- Silver
"We have only been rowing together since coming here to Bled. So it's good to race here and to win a medal. This is a great place and great people. It was a hard race, but that is sport."
Hillary Saeger and Katherine Robinson (USA) -- Bronze
"When we noticed we were moving in on the Italians we went for it. It was so close at the end, I just thought: sit up, keep it clean go strong. We had no idea where we were in the final meters, but we just got it, on 0.01th of a second!"
I am back at home now enjoying my brief time off before the upcoming years adventures. Bled was great. It is a really nice resort town in Slovenia. Our hotel was right on the lake near the starting line so I could easily watch the start of the races I wanted to without having to travel alot and they had a TV inside that all the teams in the hotel could watch without having to go outside. There is also a path that goes all the way around the lake and everyday I would have a really nice walk to and from practice.
The racing this year was particularly harder then previous years due to the high entry count in our category and this being a pre-Olympic year, countries are sending out their top athletes to start competing. My boat had little experience doing an all out 2k together and for the first race we just went into it without any real race plan just to see how things panned out. I think that race was clean but had a lack of aggression. I think we were just trying to take it too safe in the first race. So going into the second race we decided to be more aggressive. This didn't work quite as well as we had hoped because mostly it was a fly and die race for us and probably worse then the one before. It was good to have these two race under us going into the final because I think we all knew what we needed to do. Going into the race I wanted to execute it like I would an erg test. I wanted to be clean and powerful for the first 1000m and then try to negative split for the second 1000m. I felt that was a good decision since we were able to keep our composure in the sprint and make it fast and more powerful then before. I think this helped us with the win. When we finished I didn't know what place we ended in but I knew Great Britain and China were ahead of us. So I looked up at the jumbo screen as they showed GB in first, then they flashed China as coming in second, and then I saw us come up on the screen and then it said Third place! I was so excited, surprised and relieved that all that hard work got us there. What a great feeling. It is proof that we are strong and can accomplish anything if done correctly and efficiently.
Plans are falling into place for the upcoming year but nothing too definite yet. Thank you all for your support. Right now I am home just getting my life organized before the upcoming year. I am very excited!