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Transatlantic rower angered by cheating claims |
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13 December 2003 |
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| It is the simple things that remind champion transatlantic rower Jamie Fitzgerald he is home. | |
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Going to the fridge to make himself a
tomato sandwich – "something I craved while I was out there" – or diving
for crayfish. Fitzgerald, 23, was one half of the Holiday Shoppe Challenge (HSC) crew who won the 5000km transatlantic rowing race from the Canary Islands to Barbados in a record 40 days, 5 hours, 31 minutes. However, his epic adventure was soured when second-placed New Zealand crew Steve Westlake and Matt Goodman accused HSC of cheating to make up the gap between them after trailing for much of the race. The dispute will drag on into next year, with race organisers declining to hold a judicial hearing into the allegations until the last boat finishes in late January. Fitzgerald was back in Tauranga yesterday, reuniting with family and friends, and trying to put the claims to the back of his mind. But he said he was quietly seething. Westlake and Goodman say is no way Fitzgerald and Kevin Biggar could have made up a 50 nautical mile deficit in the last week. They claim HSC altered the angle of the solar panel mounted to the top of their cabin roof to create a sail. They also say Fitzgerald and Biggar jettisoned most of their heavy equipment in the final week to make their 7m boat lighter. Fitzgerald said it was hard slog and not foul play that got them ahead. But Fitzgerald said they abandoned their two hours-on, two-off schedule to row in tandem for up to eight hours a day in the last three weeks to catch up. "It's gutting this whole thing has become the centre of attention, not the excitement of how we caught up and passed them. "I'm trying to put it to the back of my mind but it's taken the gloss off everything, although the important thing to me is that the people I care about, my family and friends, believe in me." Fitzgerald rowed with Westlake and Goodman for the Auckland club. Pleasantries were exchanged in the Canary Islands before the race started, "but it was more polite conversation because you could feel the rivalry", he said. Fitzgerald asked why he would throw much of their equipment overboard days from the finish. "We were hit by a rogue wave in the middle of the night. We lost one seat, so we were forced to row with one dodgy seat and one seat that had been made out of parts of the boat. "We also lost our GPS (global positioning system) and a lot of our electronic equipment. Why would we chuck our most important items?" Fitzgerald, who rowed naked for much of the 40 days, also lost his only pair of shorts overboard. He fashioned a makeshift pair out of a polypropelene top to maintain his modesty when he cleared customs on the approach to Barbados. Fitzgerald will back on Waikato River with his University Boathouse eight on Tuesday and also has a management exam to look forward to. But he is not itching to return to the Atlantic |
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