FOUR days to the big race and UCD women have reason to be confident. Two years unbeaten in domestic competition, open championship title holders in eights and fours, second only to the British national eight at Henley last year.

"From our results over the winter we should throttle, them" was the sort of pre-race analysis coming out of the crew huddle. The mood is St Triniansesque, nine girls tooled up with oars and cox boxes talking about raiding the neighbouring convent, school.

A month ago they finished the Galway Tribesmen course 54 seconds ahead of the Trinity women and after six months of gym and small boat work the women will be hoping to repeat their Dublin Head form of a fortnight ago. Then, they won by a clear minute from a strong University of Wales crew and were another two minutes ahead of the day's nearest home based rival.

According to their coach, former 1980s Trinity captain and champion sculler Nick Mahony, that was their fastest row of the season. Mahony, who took over from Neptune's open eight coach Peter Buckley last year, is quick to add that it's not necessarily a guide to what happens today For one thing, he says, two of the line up ruled they aren't students.

It's going to be a closer contest than some of them eight think. Trinity have an intermediate boat and we have a mixture of open and novice and whereas they've been setting, off in professional style, in this race they will set 911 together.

Starting side by side is psychologically quite tough and it'll be a fast race at race rates so they have to work comfortably at rhythm with out letting the technique fall away. The idea is to get ahead as soon as possible and I expect that Trinity will have a race plan that tries to counter that."

Following the eight on bicycle, Mahony points out what the crew have been working on. With the Ghent B International Regatta later this year to aim for, training has been focused on better efficiency at the racing rates of 40 strokes a minute.

But with a relatively inexperienced bow four for today's race, his immediate concern is keeping under 23 trialist Vanessa Lawrenson from raising the rate under pressure and losing some of those behind her. If Trinity are still in touch in the last stages of the race they might stage an upset.

It's seven o'clock in the morning. It's less crowded at this time of the day explains wide awake coach Raymond Blake as a blur of a boat careers info a passing swan behind him.

As it momentarily slows it is possible to make out the Trinity men's open eight fastest crew on the water this year and odds on to take UCD apart today. For Blake and second half of the coaching team. Nick Dunlop, anything less than trouncing of UCD would be a disappointment especially as the "It was so easy" T Shirts have already, been bought.

Both former captains of the club, Blake and Dunlop have built up a boat that last year took the intermediate eight title at the national championships and has signalled its intent by beating the current open champions, Neptune, at Belfast, Galway and Dublin heads over the winter.

Dunlop has his crew batching videos of the New Zealand 1992 Olympic winners and 1994 Cambridge boat race crew as coached by Kiwi, Harry Mahon. "We keep going on about a look which they don't have at the moment. Both of us would be looking for a very solid, horizontal movement and getting rid of the jagged whacking away. We need that smoothness because we don't have eight giants in the boat, says Dunlop.

From the bicycle path Blake and Dunlop seem more concerned about early catches and split times over 500 and 1000 metre pieces. It is Wednesday and the next days will be spent winding down and practising the starts.

"There's no doubt that are the favourites and that really leaves the underdogs with the only option of going off fast. It's the first side by side race of the season and it can be really quite unsettling to find the opposition alongside rather than behind you," says Blake.

"In the past it's meant that we've won it but have been left disappointed with a margin that just isn't a proper reflection of our relative standing. This year there's a lot of emphasis on practising the starts. We want to, be able to row our own race from the beginning".