KEY POINTS:
Graeme Hill reckons he's been grumpy for much of the past couple of months.
He is in his first year in the New Zealand elite rowing squad and he puts it down to coming to terms with a training regime far tougher than that he experienced at under-23 level last year.
"The training, for me, has been through the roof," Hill says. "I've enjoyed it but it's definitely a lot harder than previous years.
"I've been quite tired, quite grumpy, but we're just coming to the end of the long kilometres and starting to do more speed work. Straight away you can see the change. Everyone's starting to liven up."
The 19-year-old bow man from Tauranga is the youngest member of the men's eight, and the shortest so "I catch quite a bit of the end of the jokes. I don't mind it".
Hill will happily cop the odd ribbing because life is good right now. He's off to Europe tomorrow for two World Cup regattas and the world championships in Munich.
There, New Zealand must finish in the top seven - that is, win the B final at worst - to qualify the eight for the Beijing Olympics next year.
They are starting well behind the other New Zealand elite crews. This is their first year together, having essentially been a merger of last year's bronze medal-winning world champs coxed four and the under-23 coxless four.
As much as they'd like to ignore it, they know the mention of the words "rowing" and "eight" in the same sentence carries weight in New Zealand sport. They don't want to dwell on the past, rightly so, but it's hard to escape.
A brief recap: in the 1972 Munich Olympics, a New Zealand eight won the gold medal, a group of amateurs holding off the East Germans, who were professionals with all the dubious advantages their state apparatus could offer.
As they stood on the dais, for the first time God Defend New Zealand rang out as the country's national anthem. Until then, it had always been God Save The Queen.
Tough, hard men shed tears that day on the top step at Feldmoching and ever since, for all the success enjoyed at subsequent world championships and Olympic Games - and with all due respect to those achievements - that day has stood supreme in rowing and as one of New Zealand's great days in sport. Period.
Eights coach Mark Stallard knows there is a balance required between acknowledging the past, but also focusing on what lies ahead.
"The eight is a really galvanising thing for the public, especially after 1972," Stallard says. "That was a pretty important thing for our country. But we've got to be mindful we don't worry too much about the past. We've got to make our own destiny. We don't measure ourselves by anyone else."
Stallard professes to being "very happy" at progress. "We've done a lot of miles, we're pretty fit and reasonably strong. We've still got three months to go [to the worlds]."
The eight are a long-term project. When New Zealand host the world champs at Lake Karapiro in 2010, Rowing New Zealand wants the country lining up in all the major events. The last time an eight went to a world championship was 1998 at Cologne, and it included Rob Hellstrom, who has won his place back in the elite squad, and in the eight this year.
The eight has essentially been formed out of the elite coxed four and last year's under-23 coxless four. The fact both were strong crews tells Stallard that putting the big boat together has not been done "on a whim".
When Britain won the 2000 Olympics gold "they chewed through about 20 guys in four years. We've got nine to choose from."
It sounds like one of those stories which tell you much about New Zealand sport; the resources might not stack up against the bigger nations, but punching above their weight becomes second nature.
"It's going to take a bit of time, but some of our training times of late, the commitment and adaptation the guys have made has been really good."
New Zealand have regattas at Amsterdam and Lucerne as lead-ins to the worlds. Hill believes the eight won't be at its peak for Amsterdam.
The focus is on Munich, starting August 26.
Hill is in his second year of a mechanical engineering degree at Waikato University. It's tough mixing top-level sport with study and he quipped that the four-year degree might take him seven.
"A few people have told us, and we've heard through the grapevine, that we're not expected to do that well," says Hill. "It will be a big bonus if we make it to the Olympics.
"But it's a good bunch of guys, like Rob, who's been to the Olympics, others have been to the worlds."
So, what chance of securing a Beijing trip without having to run the risk of trying to nab the final spot at the Lucerne regatta next year?
"On the times we've done now, if you used Eton [last year's worlds, as a benchmark] we would possibly have qualified," Stallard says. "I know everyone is going to step up because it's a sharp year, but we're in the ballpark. I don't think we're going to let anyone down."
Eights Gold
1972 New Zealand 6m 08.94s
1976 East Germany 5m 58.29s
1980 East Germany 5m 49.05s
1984 Canada 5m 41.32s
1988 Germany 5m 46.05
1992 Canada 5m 29.53s
1996 Netherlands 5m 42.74s
2000 Great Britain 5m 33.08s
2004 United States 5m 42.48sball
