Račice, CZECH REPUBLIC—It’s exceedingly important, when setting out towards the host city of this year’s Under-23 World Rowing Championships, to make very certain that you’re headed for the correct “Račice.”

It turns out there are two cities called Račice in the Czech Republic. When you search on Wikipedia, the first result that comes up is the correct Račice (in this case), a barely there village (pop. 308) about one hour’s drive north of Prague notable only for being the republic’s premier venue for rowing and flatwater sports — it hosted the World Rowing Championships in 1993.

If, on the other hand, you plug Račice into Google Maps, and drive to the “other” Račice, about 2 hours west of Prague, and, just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re the parents of one of the boys in Canada’s lightweight four, you’re probably going to end up missing your son’s race.

“Yeah, they were wondering why it was so far away,” this hypothetical Canadian rower told me a couple minutes ago in the cafeteria (a popular meeting place when you bring together 600 athletes from 40 countries, seemingly all of whom are two metres tall and weigh 100 kilos), located behind the finish area of the man-made basin that comprises the 2km racing course. “So they raced back up to this Račice, arrived right as my race was scheduled to start, and stormed through the security barrier screaming that they weren’t going to miss my heat.”

Unfortunately, the heat time had been moved up two hours due to weather conditions. But it was a nice drive.

The weather was the big story of Day 1 of the U23 World Rowing Championships, the regatta first held in 1976 in Macon, France that serves as a showcase for up-and-coming athletes hoping to progress to Olympic level (in this case, the goal is the 2012 Games in London).

Violent winds tore through the course during yesterday’s afternoon session, causing races to be rescheduled and, more importantly, knocking over a rack of boats. Some of today’s “repechage” races had to be rescheduled, too, while the crews waited on repaired or replacement boats. Since these boats are light, high-tech racing machines, the damage to this fragile equipment (shown here in photos) was both extensive and expensive.

OK, so this is the part of the story where I explain why I’ve come all the way to a small village in the Czech Republic to watch young people row. Full disclosure: my brother is rowing for Canada, in the men’s heavyweight single skull scull category. I promised him that if he qualified for the Canadian squad, I’d fly to Prague and take the train out to Racice to watch him race (the right Racice, though if you order tickets to “Racice” from the Czech rail website, you’ll end up in the wrong place — Hnevice is where you actually want to go). And so here I am. I’m happy to announce that Michael finished second in his repechage (a French word that essentially means “second selection” or “re-sorting”), just behind a Latvian and ahead of the third-place (and out-of-chances) Swede, and thus qualified for tomorrow’s semifinals.

And just to prove how acutely weather can effect a boat race, Michael’s time yesterday for 2km, a couple hours before the storm hit, was 7:31:72. Today, with a tailwind and a self-described “lousy start,” he finished in 7:04:08.

So that about does it for today’s dispatch from the press tribune, which is completely empty now, as are the rest of the stands, the last of the repechages having concluded two hours ago. A couple crews are out training on the Racice basin, and the organizers just held a practice medal ceremony, to rehearse the flag-raising and medal-around-the-necking in advance of Sunday’s finals. The young Czech volunteers played the part of the victorious athletes. The flags raised were Sweden in first place, Italy in second and Iran in third, but the emcee (a French woman, since French is the official language of FISA, the international federation of aviron) announced that all three winners were representing the Czech Republic.

The public was invited to cheer on the winners – though, again, I’m the only one left here – and then from the PA system burst forth the Czech national anthem: Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”

I think it’s time to head back into Prague for a beer. This party’s dead anyways.