Αφιερωμένο στον Νίκο και την Θώμη.

Men’s Pair (M2-) – A Final

 

Everybody knew it. Through this season and last season the men’s pair was all about two countries and four names – Eric Murray and Hamish Bond of New Zealand and Pete Reed and Andrew Triggs Hodge of Great Britain. Reed made it clear after the semifinal, he was here only to take gold, but the odds were in favour of New Zealand. Bond and Murray had 10 straight wins against the Brits, some of them quite dominating.

Today Greece’s Georgios Tziallas and Ioannis Christou took off in the lead. Tziallas and Christou are part of a growing strength in Greek rowing which saw their former men’s pair on the medals podium in 2009. But Reed and Hodge had a plan. Before the 500m mark the British had the lead with New Zealand slipping right in behind them. And with that Great Britain and New Zealand showed their true superiority, moving away from the rest of the field.

As more than 10,000 people on the shores of Lake Karapiro rose to their feet a deafening chorus helped to bring the crews home. The commentator at the course, Robert Treharne- Jones described the pace as white hot. Fingernails amongst the New Zealand and British rowing establishment were being chewed right down. Coming into the last 500m Reed and Hodge remained just ahead of Bond and Murray. With every move the New Zealanders made, the British would counter it. There was nothing in it at the line. Great Britain had led New Zealand for 1998m. In the last metre all of that changed. The usually stoic Bond was ecstatic. Reed and Hodge take silver, but their awesome performance had brought them the closest that they have ever been to the New Zealand boat.

 

Tziallas and Christou took the bronze and there was no hiding their absolute delight.

 

Eric Murray (NZL) – Gold

“We made the race pretty difficult for ourselves. We didn’t put the nail in the coffin early enough, so it was a sprint for the line.”

Hamish Bond (NZL) – Gold

“It definitely wasn’t our best race but that’s what we do the training for to win under challenging conditions. We are so pleased to get there at the end. It’s definitely a highlight of my career.”

Pete Reed (GBR) – Silver

"I thought there would have been a bigger margin between us. But the crowd took it away from us. All credit to the Kiwis, I don’t want to take anything away from them." 

Ioannis Christou (GRE) – Bronze

“We tried to be at the same level as the British and the Kiwis. And we tried to attack them during the first part of the race, but they were too strong for us. We are very happy with this third place, because there were so many surprises in this World Championship. We had no problem to secure this medal very quickly. I would like to dedicate this medal to my 20 day-old boy Nikos and my wife Thommy.”