Anyone fancy an exclusive extract to get you through a Monday morning? Cool, thought you might. Here’s the final of the 2017 Rowing World Championships.
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At 500, they were gone. Poland, of course Poland, jump out almost from the first dip of blade into water. The Dutch, brave but outgunned again, Australia and Germany having a go from the outside lanes, and it's Britain against the United States for the honour of not coming last. You can't afford to let the field get away in a world championships final, but with 600 metres down the GB boat is already 12 metres back from the Poles, and if it's not quite getting worse, it's certainly not getting better. Out front, meanwhile, it's settling into a procession to the line. Poland have pulled out to seven, eight metres in front of the Dutch – a good half a boat length – and that gap is going nowhere as they reach halfway. They're in control.
One kilometre down, one to go, and maybe there's been a little something from Britain. Poland are still in command, and Jess and the crew aren't laying an oar on them, but the Australians and the Germans are sliding back into the pack; and suddenly, with 1150 gone, there are four boats fighting for bronze. 1250, 1300, and while the US aren't making any inroads, there's now nothing, literally nothing, between Australia, Germany and Britain.
And Mathilda gives the call and they go, blades in and through and out and back, and it's not perfect and seamless and smooth and effortless – it never is – but a stroke rate of 35 becomes 36, and then 37. The other crews are winding it up too, and they're hitting higher stroke rates, but nobody's going faster than the British, and Poland are rocking. Katarzyna Zillmann looks cool enough in the stroke seat, but the pain is coursing through Maria Springwald and Marta Wieliczko behind her, and there's fear in the face of Agnieszka Kobus at bow.
The Netherlands haven't managed to close the gap as they come into the last 500, but they've hung on, and unlike the crew to which they've been losing all season, they look smooth. And there's Great Britain! They've come through the Australians, they're pulling away from Germany, and with three hundred to go, they couldn't, could they? It's part of Beth's job to keep an eye on where they are in the field, and she's told the crew a couple of hundred back that they were in bronze; and while as far as Jess knows, that could be bollocks, she trusts Beth in what she's really saying, and that is: just f**king keep going, you lot, keep going, and you're going to win a world medal.
My god, what power! They're eating up the lake, metre by metre by metre, and they're doing it at the lowest stroke rate of anyone. Mathilda's chipped in again too – “we're in third, the Germans are attacking, we need to go”, but she's undersold it, because the British are, right this second, the best, the smoothest, the strongest boat on the water.
But then the Netherlands respond to this monster hunting them down from the lane inside, and they up the stroke rate to 40, 41, and Poland are shot, and within 100 metres the Dutch have gone from a third of a length back on the triple World Cup winners to poking a bow ball ahead, and the line just a few more strokes away.
And if this race were 2,500m rather than 2k, you'd have had the Brits nailed on to row straight through both of them. But the finish line comes too soon, and it's the Netherlands who sink to their knees in the boat in exhaustion and disbelief, and broken Polish bodies that simply collapse in despair, and Jess and Holly and Mathilda and Beth will have to settle for bronze; but if Belgrade was depressing and Račice was a lonely light in the gloom, then this bronze medal is one to savour.