What an awesome night with the BRF and Sir Steve Redgrave. Interesting to hear about his very humble beginnings in the sport, what sport can mean for people, his views on Russian doping, and a few more topics. Sir Steve tells you to support the BRF!

Many thanks to Chuck Pieper, who not only invited Sir Steve to speak, but also did the leg work to get the space at CRI and support the open bar.

Packed house on Sunday night when most of the river's rowing population was either in St. Catharines or heading that way.

Probably the best moment of the night was when Jenny (coxswain of the paralympic LTA4+) asked Steve about distractions at the games. Steve launched into a very long discussion on the distractions of the food halls, on the arcade games at the LA games, email at the Barcelona games, etc. Then he looks straight at Jenny, and goes "and you shouldn't let any of that get in the way. You should focus on what you trained for. On what you came here to do. On ... winning the SILVER medal". Delivered with the same intensity and passion as the rest of the speech, but he's still a Brit through and through. Jenny was not quite amused, but had a good laugh about it and all the LTA4+ athletes present posed for photo with Steve afterwards. I told them to pose with him when they get their gold medals.

And now, meet your U23 Lightweight Single, Riverside's and Brown's Emma Betuel.

Early start for practice

Cranking along

The basin was gloriously flat and empty.

Hard work is more fun with friends

CBC's Molly Pierce joined the workout. You may also remember her from her other role as Jim Pierce's daughter. :)

TK!

CB was out as well.

All in all, a pretty good day.

Pretty early start for the US Lighweight Men's Quadruple Sculls, though not quite before sunrise.

Featuring Tobin "Quads" McGee. He can row port, he can row starboard, he can scull. Baby, he's amphibious (google Charles Shackleford).

Chris Rogers the man with the (race) plan. I still think he's Cameron Booth's clone.

Peter "I don't get yelled at anymore!" Schmidt. Not one of Lt. Schmidt's children, as far as I know. (You have to be of Soviet extraction to really understand that joke).

And Jake Georgeson, who's excitement of making his second national team may or may not pale in comparison to his beloved Cavs winning the NBA title.

With Judith Vogel at the megaphone.

Getting all the crests to be visible and lit up by the sun took half a practice. I am sure they were working hard, too.

Sitting ready

Cranking along

And now, racing into the sun.

USA! USA! USA! USA!

Most definitely not Kansas. Love that dirty water.

Fun with slow shutter speeds. Much easier to do when the launch is moving at the same exact speed.

Always helps to have a few friends along for the ride.

Maybe more than a few...

Obligatory blades shot.

The salad cart didn't make it into Saturday's meatwagon photo shoot.

Fortune favors the brave??

Tooling around the waterfront, and found this colorful bridge.

Hannah on a late evening row upstream.

Moon over Pierce, sunrise over the skyline.

Decent oar bend for this Newell pair.

Sky was starting to increasingly gray, so I almost went home, but decided to hang around for another 15 minutes. Totally worth it.

Dorian took a break from one oar on Saturday morning.

Spontaneously decided to ride along with Coach Jefe yesterday.

Practice started off with a bit of a repair job on Xavi's oarlock.

Shortly followed by a mid-row replacement of Eric's broken oar.

Followed up by Alex's shoe separating from the footstrechers.

Meanwhile, it was a party in the barge.

While Trey did a saintly job of ducking under the telephoto

Fortuntely, that didn't derail practice too much, and the meat wagons were trucking

Some with perhaps a bit more meat than others.

No shoe, no shirts, no problems.

At least these guys didn't have to steer.

He did, though.

All kinds of small boats.

Jack seems to still remember how to use two oars.

Nice uni.

Making lemonade.

Wasn't all smooth sailing, as previously noted.

But it all worked out in the end.