KEY POINTS:
In a moment of quiet reflection, George Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle will tell you it is more fun being the hunter rather than the hunted.
After coming from a surprising fourth place at the 2004 Olympics to creating a rowing masterpiece at Gifu, Japan, in 2005, the defending
world champion men's pair did the rowing equivalent of treading water last year.
Part of it was technical errors, part of it, Twaddle concedes, was attitude.
"When you're top of the world it's easier to have a bad session and go 'it's OK, we're world champions, we can get away with it'," he says.
"Suddenly, when you're not [world champs] any more, you tend to put things in context and say 'that was a bad row and we're not good enough yet to get where we need to be'."
Twaddle and his long-levered partner Bridgewater train better, he says, when they're underdogs, not top dogs.
It's not like they were awful in Europe last summer. In the final of the world champs at Eton they finished second, albeit a distant second, to Australian duo Drew Ginn and Duncan Free. That result was gained through sheer hard work on the Continent after an undignified entry on to the 2006 World Cup circuit in Poland.
"We had a rude awakening in our first World Cup regatta last year where we finished fifth. For us it just wasn't good enough so we started hammering ourselves in training and made some big gains," Bridgewater recalls.
Twaddle realised what went wrong in Poland was the result of what had been going on in New Zealand.
"It was a lesson for us that you have to be on your game for 12 months of the year, you can't just expect to start turning it on in the build-up.
"The result we got last year was testament to how hard we worked when we got over there, but it was what we lacked when we worked in New Zealand that made the difference. That's the difference for us this year - we've trained incredibly hard through the summer and into the winter so far. We're going over there with a lot better base and a lot more confidence, which is really important."
Those improvements were confirmed by Rowing New Zealand high performance manager Andrew Matheson who said simply "their boat was going really fast". That's rowing-speak for "they are on top of their game".
They've had to be. Prospects weren't looking flash at the beginning of last summer when the experienced Twaddle found himself incapacitated by things he couldn't pronounce.
"It was a lower back injury. I've got fiddly things with long names in my lower back that have been giving me grief for years, but it's never got as bad as it did over summer. It was a long and frustrating time being out over the summer, six weeks I think. I hit the trials in not the greatest of shape but George has been pretty good, very patient but hammering me at the same time."
Bridgewater's tough-love is understandable. The Australians won't be going any slower and are renowned for pulling out big performances in big regattas. The Chinese came from nowhere to a final last year and will be massively motivated by a home Olympic campaign. The Canadians are always strong, as are the Germans.
There's no time to tread water.
