2008 Olympics Updates

It’s so hard to describe how it feels as we make the final preparations for Sunday’s final.

We have spent the week working on all the aspects of rowing and our racing that we think could possibly give us more boat speed.

We were pleased with our heat, and it was a good win for us, but we know that the final will be on an entirely different level.

There is no way of knowing how the race will develop and unfold, so all we can do is prepare ourselves the best we can and take everything we have, all our strengths – old and new – and all our passion to the start line.

This is my second Olympic final, but I’m not sure that makes it any easier.

I know what is coming up, I know that I am going to feel ill to the pits of my stomach, that my mind will be playing games with me, the voices shouting from temple to temple louder than my head can possibly contain.

Often I feel that getting myself to the start line in the right state of mind is the hardest part of it all.

But between now and when nerves really start to kick in, all I can do is prepare my response to the questions I am going to be asking myself, and go over and over again in my head just how I am going to row, how I am going to make the first two strokes of the race.

There is a very fine line between doing all the preparation that I need to do, and doing too much.

We will have to be relaxed and focused when we race, not anxious or tense.

Once you get to the Olympics, everyone is physically and technically exceptional – no one gets a head start.

There is no advantage given for past form, it is all about the moment. I’m just doing my very best to make our moment the best it can possibly be.

We fly out to Beijing on Wednesday and the excitement is really building. Apparently we have done 308 days of preparation so far this year.

So adding up all the years since I have been rowing and dreaming about this kind of opportunity, I make that roughly 4,299 days of preparation.

But that is too many days to think about at the moment, so I’m just taking it one day at a time, one session at a time, relishing the moment we are in.

After training camps abroad over the last few weeks we have come together as a full squad – men and women – at our training centre in Caversham in Reading for our final preparations.

Unfortunately we couldn’t go out to join the rest of Team GB in Macau as there is no rowing course there, but bringing the whole rowing squad together for this last week has really made the momentum build.

The hotel and boathouse here have both been set up to have an Olympic feel, which gives us all that extra lift every day.

Everyone is really looking forward to seeing what the Games are going to be like and to getting out there and seeing how fast we can all go.

With all the build-up and counting down that’s going on all around us, in the papers and on the television, it feels like we have next to no time left.

But in fact the heats will take place in just under two weeks, and the finals in just under three; and in training and peaking terms three weeks is a long time.

So there are still many sessions and many days left yet to get the most out of, and just as well as there is still really important work to be done in bringing everything together, making the final tweaks in technique and making sure that we are sharpening up physically.

Who knows what it’ll be like in Beijing when we get out there, but every day now we are finding more speed with the boat and feeling better recovered in ourselves.

The only way is up (and slightly eastwards) now, so I’ll just keep taking it one day at a time until the starter says go!

Three weeks to go until the Olympics start – and you won’t believe it, but I’ve got a horrendous cold! It’s actually got worse over the last few days – I can’t even breathe properly, but I’m on antibiotics so hopefully that’ll cure me.

It’s been a while since I last blogged, so let me just update you on what’s been happening. At the end of April I went on holiday to Goa with my boyfriend Ed – 10 days of sun, really hot, lovely beach, really chilled out, and once I got back, we got straight into our 12-week programme of Olympic training.

My mixed doubles partner Nathan Robertson also had ankle surgery while I was away – he was really scared about it all, because it was a potentially career-threatening injury. But the surgeon said the operation was a complete success, and Nathan since then has been making a miraculous recovery.

I’d say he’s around 95% now – and he’s playing better than the whole of the last 18 months put together. Before it was the fear factor, being scared of doing certain movements, but now he now knows his ankle is as stable as it’s ever going to be, so he’s relaxed and there’s nothing to lose. If there’s any doubt in his mind about the injury, he’s hiding it very well!

The annoying thing is, that having missed all the physical work at the start of the 12-week period (because he was doing his rehab), he’s now actually playing better than all of us, but we’re the ones who’ve done all the hard work! We would never be able to be medal contenders the way his ankle was, but we can now really go for it and we have to.

We did have one ‘practice’ competition at the end of June when we went out to Singapore for a training camp and the Super Series tournament itself. Nathan wasn’t allowed to play in the mixed doubles which was really annoying as we had a great draw and it would’ve been nice to get some matches together. So I just played loads of ladies doubles with Donna Kellogg.

At that tournament, Donna and her mixed partner Anthony Clark beat Olympic favourites Zheng Bo and Gao Ling. It was a great result for Donna and Clarky against the Chinese pair.

Comparing us two GB mixed pairs, I think over the past year we’ve been quite equal with results. Donna and Clarky are up to sixth in the rankings, while we’ve dropped down to eighth – but given that Nathan and I have struggled with injury and illness and missed tournaments, that’s not too bad.

We had a bit of heat training out in Singapore – but you can never predict the conditions you’re going to be faced with. When we go to places like that, we try to play in hot halls and do power-walks outside, trying to get used to the humidity, but we’ll do the main bit of it when we get out to Macau at the end of July for the training camp. Nathan and I are an attacking pair, so in a way I’d like the conditions to be quicker in China because our attacks are difficult to repel, but then I guess the smashes coming at me will be very quick too!

I’m just trying to keep life as normal as possible over these next two weeks before I leave the UK – I don’t have any superstitions any more, even though I used to…things like lucky socks or doing things in a particular order, but I’ve grown out of that now.

I think next week will be when I start panicking a bit – but for me, it’s part of the normal adrenaline rush and getting fired up. Nathan is definitely calmer and more chilled, and sometimes when I go “Oh my God, what about this, what about that?” he just looks at me as if I’m some complete weirdo and says “What are you panicking about? Just chill out.”

I know it’s to do with luck on the day, and I think there are eight or nine pairs that could win the gold in Beijing, but I also know that when Nathan and I play our best, we are awesome and we are the best in the world.

My competition starts on 9th August in the ladies doubles with Donna, and then we get going in the mixed on the 10th – you can follow it all here on the BBC Sport website. Let’s hope I’ve got rid of my stinking cold by then!

Gail Emms was talking to BBC Sport’s David Garrido

Britain’s Olympic chiefs have a killer statistic they troop out whenever they want to explain a new initiative, silence an awkward question or justify some fresh expense: five of Team GB’s gold medals in Athens were won by a total of 0.545 seconds.

The point is simple – the difference between first and second is minuscule so even the smallest potential gain should be explored – and the stat is the Olympic version of a striped football shirt in that it can hide a multitude of sins.

The half-a-second between somewhere and nowhere line got an airing at Bisham Abbey on Wednesday but this time it was difficult to argue with as it was used in relation to Team GB’s latest wheezes to win more medals in Beijing.

I’m sure you’ve noticed a dramatic change in the tone of the coverage about the Beijing Olympics during the past two weeks.

A month ago China was under increasing international pressure over its human rights record, but the earthquake changed all that.

Now the country has the world’s sympathy and support as it comes to terms with the extent of the terrible natural disaster.

It’s going to be very interesting to see if that tone will change again in the weeks leading up to the Games.