Thought of being world champions still hard to believe

Editor's Note: Rothesay rower Ed Winchester Z's coming off a World Championship, gold-medal performance as the bowman in the Canadian pairs boat with Ben Storey. Tomorrow they leave for Sydney, Australia, as alternates for the lightweight fours team that will compete in the Olympic Games. Winchester, a journalism graduate, will bring us a behind-the-scenes weekly diary until the Games begin, when he will make daily contributions.

Hungerford and Jackson were the last Canadian men to win a world title in the pair-oared event, after taking the field by surprise at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

I still have a hard time believing that Ben Storey and I would be the ones to end that 36-year drought, only a week ago now, on the Jarun Lakes Regatta Course, in Croatia.

Ben was as equally incredulous.

When he woke up somewhere in the woods of Austria during our 14-hour train ride from Zagreb back to Zurich, the first thing he did was pull out his gold medal from his pocket.

"It really happened," he said.

With all the chaos surrounding the Olympic Rowing team's final preparations before tomorrow's flight to Sydney, the tails of last Sunday's race are already starting to fade.

I remember Ben screaming at me to jack the stroke rate and go for the finish line. Then, after the finishing horn blew, he stretched back into the boat, pointed his finger into the air and started to laugh.

"I quit," I thought I heard him say. Or maybe that was me.

I turned around and we locked hands. He was having a hard time catching his breath but he was still giggling. Meanwhile, in the British pair one lane over, bowman Peter Haining was verbally undressing his strokeman for letting us move through them in the final 10 strokes.

Three times, maybe four, I asked Ben if we'd really done it. That was probably why he was laughing. In the closest race of the regatta in one of the toughest lightweight pair fields ever assembled, we'd somehow managed to pull up even with the British and sprint through them to win the World Championship.

Up until the Worlds in Zagreb, Croatia, no one would have pegged us for world champions.

Ben and I have rowed together at every National Team trials since 1996. We've won our share of races, but had a reputation for not being able to come up with the big performance when it counted. At the Olympic Trials, for instance, we fell one second short of getting a shot at the Olympic-class boat, the lightweight four.

In fact, that was our pattern for almost every selection regatta. We could finish in the medals, even lead for a good portion of the race, but we could never win. Without that big result, we were branded as chronic underachievers.

That's partly why our coach had decided to name us as alternates for the Olympic Games in Sydney.

But even with all that, we'd always decided to stick together. I agreed to row with Ben when I was one of the strongest on the team and was being courted by other big name Canadian lightweights to race the pair. He stuck with me after I blew out my back, had a risky surgery, and returned with a big question mark beside my name.

Coaches sometimes speak about the intangibles crews need to be successful.

The intangibles started to work for us during the World Cup race earlier in the summer. When it came time for the World Championships, we were hardly recognizable as the pair that used to squander leads and mess up weigh-ins.

Still, the final was anything but textbook. We fell dangerously far behind the favored British crew in the opening quarter of the six-plus minute race. But we settled into a strong race rhythm and were beginning to eat away at their lead.

The wind hadn't been a factor all week, but for the final it had shifted to a strong headwind, which we knew would tag on about 20 seconds to the length of the race.

Ben makes all the race calls in the boat, but for the first half of the 2,000-metre race, he was silent. We passed the first 500-metre marker in fourth place in a dead heat with the Dutch, Denmark and the Italians. Great Britain had pulled out to a three-and-a-half second lead but going so far ahead in a headwind takes a lot of energy and we knew they'd pay.

At 1,000 metres, we had almost cut their lead in half and had moved past Italy into third position. With 500 metres to go, we were in second and had raised our stroke rate to 39 strokes per minute.

I can remember looking over and seeing the Dutch crew - this season's World Cup champions - starting to surge. And in my peripheral vision, the bow of the British pair was coming back into view. We were reeling them in.

After about three-and-a-half minutes without a race call, Ben started screaming to empty the tank. We started pulling harder and counting strokes to the line. He cocked his head left toward the British crew, and screamed out the name of their arrogant bowman.

(Haining, a three-time World Champion in the lightweight singles, had been baiting us all week; waving to the crowd as they were passing the finish fine ahead of us in our heat, boasting to the British press how they'd win the final, attempting not-so-subtle head games during pre-race weigh-ins. This was a little payback.)

The British were dying - they'd gone out too hard in the headwind - and we moved through them in the final 100 metres. For the last gasp to the line, we were almost taking one stroke for every second. Denmark also had a strong sprint and came within.08 of a second of the British to win bronze.

Back in London, Ont., our 15 minutes of fame are nearly up. As spares for the lightweight four, our job will be largely behind the scenes, keeping fit and staying on call in case of injury or illnesses.

We are starting to get our Olympic training gear from Nike - 55 boxes arrived in the Rowing Canada offices last week. And the media blackout imposed by the coaching staff has been lifted for the team's final few days in-country.

I will probably never win an Olympic medal. After last weekend, I can say that without any pangs of regret or unfinished business. As for my partnership with Ben, it ended when we crossed the line two feet ahead of the next boat.

After five years, we finally figured it out. There’s no reason ever to race together again.