Busy week

Busy week at 2010 World Champs venue

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01/10/2010 10:39 CET

With one month to go until the start of the 2010 World Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro in New Zealand the goings-on have stepped up a notch. The first container of boats arrived, the first athlete arrived and ticket sales surpassed 30,000.

The first container is full of boats, oars and rowing related equipment for the United States, Canadian and Austrian teams. This is the first of 17 shipping containers and the task behind clearing the containers quickly through inspection checks and customs is big. Each container must be checked to make sure no insects or plants have ‘stowed away’ in the containers. The boats are then being individually examined by members of the local rowing community to make sure that there is no damage.

The first athlete to arrive was the Czech Republic’s Mirka Knapkova who flew in from Prague via Seoul earlier this week. Knapkova told waiting television crews on her arrival at Auckland airport that she came early to help with her acclimatisation. Knapkova stated that she also hoped arriving early would give her the edge over her competitors in the women’s single scull.

Also there to meet Knapkova was chief executive of the 2010 World Rowing Championships, Tom Mayo along with members of Maori tribe, from the Karapiro area, Ngati Koroki Kahukura.

Knapkova will train at Karapiro for two weeks before moving to Lake Rotoiti, a lake about one hour from Karapiro. She arrived separately from the rest of the Czech team which will include men’s single sculler, Ondrej Synek who comes to these championships from an unbeaten 2010 season.

Despite short delays in grandstand construction due to inclement weather, everything is on track and Mayo noted that if the championships had remained at the original dates in September, they would have struck severe weather problems. “There’s going to be better weather at the end of October,” says Mayo.

Mayo gave a sneak preview to the opening ceremony on 30 October. “It will include an evolution of rowing from the 1978 World Champs through to today.” The World Rowing Championships was last held in New Zealand in 1978.

New Zealand’s Sky television will show 42 hours of the championships with highlights being shown on the Prime channel throughout the week. The championships start on 31 October and run through to 7 November. The first round of finals will be adaptive rowing finals on 4 November with the rest of the finals spread over the 5th, 6th and 7th November.