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© 2008 Getty Images/Michael Steele
the Munich World Rowing Championships
and their performance has been consistent
ever since.
The two crewmates have become friends
since rowing together at junior level in 2003.
“Cedric has always been my model. I’ve
always wanted to do what he did. He gave
me the desire to go further,” says Julien. “We
have quite a lot in common and do things
together outside of rowing. And yet when
we’re at the start at a selection trial, it’s war
time!” they say. “We know our friendship will
last long after we finish rowing. We know we
can depend on each other. It isn’t easy to go
from situations where we have to be perfectly
together and others where we’re competing
against each other. It’s a special relationship.”
9
Julien Bahain (s) and Cedric
Berrest (two seat) racing at
the 2008 Rowing World Cup in
Lucerne, Switzerland.
of a B Final doesn’t take that much. It can
happen very quickly. It only takes one or two
seconds in the semifinal,” explain Cedric and
Julien. “Our 10th place caused us to totally re
evaluate everything: we changed coaches,
we changed boats and our way of rowing
a bit.”
That is when the French federation assigned
a female coach, Christine Gosse, to their boat.
“First we thought, ‘Oh my, what’s going to
happen now?’ but in fact we clicked almost
immediately,” they said. “It is somewhat
different, in many little ways. She sees things
differently. We analyse things a bit differently.
She’s a determined woman; we instantly
knew where she wanted to go. It’s not a
mantoman dialogue, but the dialogue of
a strongminded woman with men. She
pampers us a bit but can also shake us up
when we need it. We got into the mould and
we liked it.” One year later they won silver at
As for the future of their rowing career, both
would like it to last beyond Beijing until the
London Games in 2012. They like rowing too
much to stop just yet: “We fell into it when
we were young. When you do, you never
get out!” they exclaim. Between Beijing and
London they plan to finish their engineering
studies, which they lengthened by two years
in order to allow for more training time.
“We’ll still be young then – only 26 and 27 –
and that’s supposed to be the best years in
rowing!”
