KEY POINTS:
Well that's stuffed things up, hasn't it?
There was the Rowing New Zealand Olympic kitman, in the middle of stencilling "W. A. D. D. E ... " on the side of the Beijing-bound single-sculls luggage when a Mahe Drysdale-sized spanner messed up the works on Karapiro yesterday morning.
The old sporting maxim that a good, big man will always be beaten by a good, humungous man went overboard as the bloke generally (and perhaps unfairly) regarded as the lesser of our two rowing Titans bested Rob Waddell for just the second time on their seemingly endless road to Beijing.
To be fair, the first of the trials was held at 8am on Sunday - a daft time to do much other than feel hungover.
Waddell, however, is unlikely to have limbered up a la Jesse Ryder with a Saturday night out enjoying Hamilton's salubrious venues.
Far more likely that the 2000 Olympic champion would have been tucked into bed in his Team New Zealand jim-jams with a cup of Horlicks by about 9pm on Saturday. The RNZ kitman confident of his stencilling plans.
Waddell is too, er, dry to be found with his arm bloodied in A&E at 6am. And perhaps it's the prospect of seeing such a robotic character felled that has lent his duel with Drysdale such frisson - we love a winner almost as much as we love seeing that winner being beaten by another winner.
And if that early frisson had ebbed with Waddell's measured wins at the North Island Championships and the Nationals, then Drysdale's stirring performance yesterday has certainly put some ginger back into the affair.
So, after all this dipping of oars and grunting of strokes, who's actually in front for Beijing? Who from the pair that has brought the country five world titles since 1998 - with Waddell's Sydney Olympic gold to boot - will miss out and be likely packed off to join a crew boat?
Rowing New Zealand has been clear that the titles the pair scrapped over last month count for little against the results in the best-of-three trials. But when this point was being reiterated last month, Waddell - pegged as the RNZ favourite - seemed the shoo-in.
Drysdale's win will have blown the cobwebs out of the criteria and any hint of complacency from Waddell's mind.
His relief yesterday was evident - the roar of triumph wouldn't have been out of place on the victory dais in China. His win surprised the sporting public, and possibly himself: seeing the back of Waddell's head must be a novel sensation for any rower. Enervating enough to stir him to a second win, and a set of single sculls luggage with his name in big letters? We shall see over the next two days.
* South Africa's Super 14 teams are playing rugby of a sadistic, old, high veldt bent. So attritional and regressive have the early parts of this season's Super 14 (Afrikaans division) been that one half expects to see footage of the Stormers' games screening in black and white with comments from Winston McCarthy.
If they'd fished Danie Craven out of his cryogenic tank and popped him in front of the idiot box for Bulls v Lions last Friday night, the old boy wouldn't feel he'd missed a beat.
In this weekend's round of the Super 2 (+ Ordinary 12), the Blues face the Sharks - the half-decent Saffa mob. On paper at least, they should offer more gristle and wit than the Blues' last three opponents. If, however, the Sharks are as woeful as their countrymen have been, then the Boks' reign as World Cup champions will start to look as ignominious as the English one that preceded it.
Call me old-fashioned, but I rather like the idea of being World Champions for more than just one day. When, that is, we finally get around to being World Champions.
