THIS weekend's international regatta in Cologne provides's coaching director Thor Nilsen with a first and final chance to race his full squad before he has to decide which rowers will take the nine seats entered for Duisberg in two weeks' time and which fill the five booked on Monday's plane home.
Two lightweight coxless fours and three double sculls have been entered for today's races with the initial selection criteria of compatible weights leaving the consideration of individual performance aside until Sunday's event.
The Neptune pair of Tony O'Connor and Neville Maxwell, who were awarded £2,000 training grants from the Olympic Council this week, lead Neil Darby and Sean Heaney in one four while Donal Hanrahan strokes the other with St Michael's clubmate, Sam Lynch behind, sandwiched between Derek Holland and Adrian Smith.
In the double sculls, the Brendan Dolan and Emmet O'Brien combination that qualified for the Olympics last year stays together. Commercial's Niall Byrne and Mark Kelly race in the second boat and Niall O'Toole has managed to shed his winter training muscle to make the upper 72 1/2 kg weight limit in time to partner the Junior World Championship sculler, Fermoy's Geariod Towey.
Their competition at Cologne includes eight national crews who have already qualified with them for the Olympics and include last year's Swedish silver medalists at Tampere. The coxless four, which missed out on the direct Atlanta route after losing their steering at the World Championships, get an early preview of the Polish, Dutch, Czech and Swedish boats who they will meet again at the Lucerne Qualifying Regatta in June.
According to sweep coach John Holland the draw gives his oarsmen something to guage themselves against after a winter in training camps: "So far all the assessment has been done in the labratory's and in training, and now we get to do it racing against some excellent competition."
The slimmed down squad that travels to the next regatta in Duisberg will consist of sweep oarsmen and three scullers. Nilsen might have preferred to have kept his options open but it seems that financial, pressures may in the end have given Nilsen just the fortnight to settle on his final crews.
