Background: The swiss championships is naturally the most important regatta of the year, and is normally also the last regatta before the summer break. The regatta is on the lake Rotsee near Lucerne where also the World Cups and this year even the world championships are organized. Nordiska once again entered with their Masters eight. Having won the regatta in Lugano and Greifensee earlier this year, we were hoping for a good result, but we knew that there were some strong teams coming up for the swiss championships. With a total of 11 boats entering there were also some boats that were new to us...

The crew that participated (from bow to stroke):
Harald Grov
Jon Løkke
Sjur Vestli
Henrik Sivling
Fredrik Nilsson
Sebastian Sedvallson
Stephan Haferl
Martin Skrikerud
Anna Limburn (cox)

Reserve (and therefore photographer of most of the pictures): Mischa Sommer

(Click on the images to get a bigger version)

Carrying the boat down the landing stage.
Once again we are using our brand new boat Sleipner.

Putting the boat to water.

Leaving of for the warm-up. The lake Rotsee is so narrow and small that the warm-up area is limited between the start and the 1000 meter mark, and you can hardly overtake in the warm-up area. With 11 eights out there to warm up, and a girls double sculler race before, you can imagine that we had some traffic jam out there...

This photo shows us app. 400 m before the finish line. We had a very good start, and half way we were in the lead...
We had lane number one, which is to the right in the photo.

Here we have app. 200 m to go. Two combined teams have passed us, and we are down in third place...
Nordiska is the team closest to the camera.

Here you can see the yellow finish mark to the left in the picture.
The yellow boat in lane 5 won the race, we were third - but it was quite close as you can see from the picture.
But we were the fastest club eight this year in the masters category!
Nordiska is still the team closest to the camera.
From left to right:
Harald, Jon, Henrik, Sjur, Fredrik, Sebastian, Stephan, Martin, Anna.

After the race...

Another picture from after the race.
Here you see how "small" this lake is - some few more strokes, and we would have been crashing into the land...

Our cox Anna did once again a brilliant job - and really made us push...

Rowing back after the race.
Of course we were pleased with our third place, but when you have been in the lead - you will always feel a bit sorry for the lost race...

Here you have to pictures from after the race.
Of course - as always - we have a beer after the race.
From left to right:
Martin, Stephan, Jon, Anna, Sebastian, Sjur, Fredrik, Henrik, Harald.

Here you see a really cool man... Jon...

We even had some supporters - here are two of them.
From left to right:
Jon, Stephan, Marie Vestnes, Anne-Lise Sagen, Harald.

Stämpfli Racing Boats have constructed a 24-boat as a fun experiment for the world championships. Here you can see two pictures of the testing of the boat. Quite a few rowers - and far too many oars... :-)

After the race we went back to Zürich, were we had a barbecue for the rowers and supporters at Nordiska. The same weekend there was the Zürifäscht going on - a big party all over the centre of Zürich, so also outside Nordiska. After the barbecue we met the other rowers from our neighbour clubs, GC, Seeclub, Belvoir, Thalwil... at a open-air discotheque right outside our club. When they closed at 24.00 we spontaneously decided to invite all the rowers and supporters to party on at Nordiska, where we kept going until 3 o'clock in the morning...

Fredrik and Roland Eichenberger in the bar looking surprisingly sober...

Another shot from the bar...

And one more...

As you can see - we had great fun...

Here are some photos from Florian Eigenmann, a rower friend from GC who also joined the party:

Here you see Henrik Winnberg (who is also a member of Nordiska...).
A happy winner of the men's eight with Grasshoppers advertising for the norwegian beer.
Nordiska offered beer & sandwiches for the winners.

From the open-air-disco.

Her you see the cox of the GC-eight Varia Nikolic (who is also a Nordiska-member...) at the open-air-disco.

Drunken swiss champions...
Joli from Belvoir - swiss champion in the pair and in the eight.
Florian Eigenmann from GC - swiss champion in the eight.

Here you see our Vice President Nils taking care of the female guests (or visa versa...)

Karin Ericsson-Belart seems to be taken good care of also... :-)

Again we have advertising for the norwegian beer...

Nils doing a good job in the bar.
We had lots of thirsty rowers that night...

And Martin in the bar...

Three shots to show the atmosphere...

And... unfortunately... not all our rower friends from the neighbour clubs are equal good drinkers as they are rowers...

Last modified 11.7.01.