A 2,000m sprint, which takes about seven minutes for two women in a pair, is five minutes of passion and two minutes of sheer pain.
Most rowers do it for the passion.
But it is enduring the pain which separates the champions from the rest of the field. Little wonder, then, that rowers such as Canadian triple world champion Emma Robinson would let a small thing like cancer snuff out her dreams of Olympic glory. Robinson was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in February last year after winning her second pair world championship with Alison Korn. She had the body-regulating gland removed a month later, and went on to win her third straight world title in front of a home crowd at St Catharines last September, this time with new partner Theresa Luke. Remarkably, she is not the only Canadian rower to have made a comeback from thyroid cancer to compete at these Games.