It is one of the most memorable sporting images to come out of the Beijing Olympics - a face-on shot of two tired, triumphant oarsmen in a boat, the nearest with arms outstretched, the furthest with arms raised further into the air, with the angles of all four arms being complemented by those of the discarded blades of their boat. The whole effect is of some kind of two-headed, joyful bird.

It was, of course, that picture of Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase moments after they had secured the lightweight double sculls gold medal.


Looking again Purchase, mouth agape in a mix of joy and exhaustion, index fingers pointing skywards, it is hard to think that, earlier this year, that same Olympic champion found it hard to get out of bed.

After finishing a rather lacklustre fourth with Hunter in the Munich World Cup race at the end of May, the Oxford-based athlete succumbed to viral fatigue, with his energy levels falling to the point where the idea of competing, or even training, was out of the question. Rest was prescribed - and Purchase wasn't arguing.

"The worst part of it was not having the enthusiasm," he recalled as he stood on alongside the British training course at Caversham during a media day to mark the naming of the team for the World Championships, which start in Bled, Slovenia later this month.

"Waking up in the morning and thinking 'You know what? I think I could do with another five or six hours of sleep.' It's a challenge to get through that sort of thing, but the important thing is to do it at your own rate and make sure that everything is always on your own terms."

Hunter, too, has had his travails this year with an arm injury, which put him out of competition for several weeks, and he raced at the Lucerne World Cup in July with stand-in partner Adam Freeman-Pask.

Now, however, both men are undergoing what Hunter laughingly calls "hell" at the British team's preparation training camp in Breisach, Germany as they concentrate every speck of energy and resolve they have on retaining the world title they won in New Zealand last year.

"It's obviously been a challenging season so far from my side," Purchase said. "I think Mark has found certain aspects of it difficult as well. But between the two of us we've learned a lot and I think we will be a better crew and a more knowledgeable crew than we were going into the World Championships last year.

"I've deliberately missed World Cups through my viral fatigue. I've chosen to miss out to make sure my training is on track. I probably could have been in a position to race in the World Cup, but my main objective was to race in the World Championships rather than muddle through World Cups.

"The important thing has been to progress at the right level, not to try and come back too fast or too slowly. It's always a fine line to try and juggle and manage. But we've hit the nail spot this time round so I'm really excited to draw a line under the World Cups and look forward to Bled."


Those championships, which run from August 28-September 4, will also offer a challenge mingling excitement and trepidation for the pair of Andy Triggs Hodge and Peter Reed, both Olympic champions in the four at the Beijing Games, who have found it impossible so far to better the New Zealand pairing of Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, who will defend their title knowing they have beaten the British world number two pair on all 13 of their meetings so far.

Fourteenth time lucky? Triggs Hodge and Reed, temperamentally unsuited to the idea of losing, are hoping so.

Meanwhile, Sam Scowen and her new partner in the double scull, Army Captain Nick Beighton, will hope to establish themselves as Paralympic contenders by achieving a podium finish in Bled.

Scowen, who finished fifth in the adaptive TA mixed double scull with James Roberts at the 2009 World Championships but was without a partner last year, said winning bronze with Beighton in their first outing, at the Munich World Cup in may, had opened up exciting possibilities.

She and Beighton, who lost both legs after stepping on an explosive device in Afghanistan in 2009, had just seven weeks together in training before their international debut in Germany.

"It was our very first competition. We hoped to come fifth or fourth, so to finish third was a real boost," she said.

"We will be looking for the same kind of performance in Bled - the French and Ukraine crews are strong, but we feel we will be faster than we were in Munich after we have done a couple of weeks hard training before the worlds.

"And if we keep improving we could be in gold position next year."


Beighton, too, is looking forwards with optimism, even if his take is a little more measured.

"We're in the mix," he said. "There are still a good five or six countries out there who are in that same ball park. France and the Ukraine obviously are up there, Australia weren't too far behind us at the World Cup, and we have still got China and Brazil to come in who are going to be competitive, and the USA have just selected a new double who clocked good time at their trials.

"So there are a good six teams there all within not very many seconds of each other, so we know that we can't be complacent. But we know that we are competitive. And that's encouraging."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.