Brave Drysdale can't remember finish

Mahe Drysdale was so out of it at the end of his bronze medal row at the Beijing Olympics he cannot remember the finish of his dramatic single sculls race last night.

After vomiting, fainting and being placed on oxygen in the medical tent, Drysdale recovered enough to be carried to the medal ceremony. By the time he'd finished his press conference he was pretty much back to normal and sprinted out of the press conference tent to try to catch the last moments of the women's double sculls.

Bowling past a couple of Chinese volunteers, he let out a wild cheer as the photo finish gave gold to the Evers-Swindell twins.

But only minutes earlier he had been a quivering wreck, unable to even sit upright on his own after an illness he picked up during the week effectively derailed his gold medal bid.

"I'm still not sure what happened at the end of the race," Drysdale said.

"Crossing the line I had to look up [at the big screen TV] to see what the result was. I rowed myself to stupidity."

Drysdale, who had led the race with just 100m to row, was overhauled by Olaf Tufte of Norway and Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic for the gold medal and immediately started vomiting - the legacy of an illness he picked up ahead of his semifinal.

Drysdale, who entered the event as the favourite, was so wrecked post-race he couldn't row his boat to the dock and had to be carried off the water on a rescue boat. He was vomiting over the side of the boat and again on the dock as medical personnel rushed to treat him.

He was put in the recovery position and then carried on a stretcher to the medical tent.

There, further drama unfolded as the three-time world champion was treated by medical staff including New Zealand team doctor Chris Milne and rowing's high performance manager Andrew Matheson., who had sprinted to the tent

They briefly sat him upright in a chair but he immediately fainted, his head falling back as he slid down the chair like an empty suit of clothes. He was unconscious for a few seconds before medical staff administered oxygen and put ice on his chest and head to try to cool him down.

He tried to sit up again but his gaunt and hollow face told the story of a body too weak to lift itself upright.

After more than 15 minutes of treatment he recovered enough to stand-up with assistance from Matheson and Milne, who then carried Drysdale to the medal ceremony. By that time he had recovered enough to receive a bronze medal that will always be associated with high drama.

Drysdale confirmed that he had been on a drip on Thursday. "That picked me up a bit but overnight I lost a lot of weight again."
 
That energy loss came back to sting him. After surging between the 1000m and 1500m mark of the 2000m race, he led until 250m to go. "At the 250m my legs started to go and I couldn't hang on. I'm not going to make any excuses, I was as well prepared as I could be on the day.

"I'm proud of my efforts today but I would have liked to have come out with the gold."

New Zealand high performance manager Andrew Matheson said the Kiwi medical team, in consultation with the New Zealand Olympic Committee, had discussed Drysdale's health at length before allowing him to compete.

There was no suggestion Drysdale's flag-bearing duties had cost him gold as there were many ill rowers at the Shunyi course, many pulling out of events yesterday and today.

George Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle followed Drysdale onto the podium with a late-charging third place in their pairs race behind Australia and Canada after trailing by a long way at the halfway mark.

"We were annihilated in the first 1000m," Bridgewater said..

Twaddle added: "We were confident we could back into the second half of the race. but the fact that we couldn't is a testament to the quality of the Australians; we let them get further away than we should have."

Bridgewater is now taking a break from rowing to study at Oxford University but said his bronze medal would be a spur to return to the sport "and finish the business".

In the men's double sculls, Rob Waddell and Nathan Cohen couldn't deliver a medal after being highly touted as gold medal contenders following their dominance of the European world cup regattas.

For Waddell, the single sculls gold medallist at Sydney in 2000, it meant there was no fairytale finish to his comeback to rowing following seven years out of the sport.

- © Fairfax NZ News