Best of Social Media for January

Poll results showed that Drew Ginn of Australia outranked both the Dane, Eskild Ebbesen and Great Britain’s comeback kid Greg Searle in popularity when it comes to those older athletes that are still going strong. Ginn proved to have a strong following by those who want to see how he’ll cope in this Olympic year.

Eskild, however, was right up there at the top when we asked, ‘who is your rowing hero?’ Great Britain’s Steve Redgrave and James Cracknell as well as Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic also got a look-in. The under-23 Facebook followers had a different answer. They chose Jueri Jaanson of Estonia for their hero.

When it comes to the ‘must have’ item when you go out for a row, the trusty water bottle, preferably full, won hands down. The end-of-year rowing wish list showed that minds were well and truly focused on the erg. The wish list was topped by the desire to ‘improve my 2000m erg time’.

Reflecting back on the year that was, 2011, the over-riding highlight of the year for World Rowing facebook socialites was the Australian lightweight men’s four victory at the 2011 World Rowing Championships. Social media followers then looked into their 2012 crystal ball and decided that Great Britain would win the most Olympic medals in rowing at London.

Generating a huge amount of interest was this photo of Marcel Hacker from Germany. We asked for your captions and we’d like to share with you some of the best:

o   Chad Andrews – Shhh you hear that?? That’s the sound of me winning!”

o   Rob Michael – "Marcel Hacker in Superglue hell: German star left on start line as Olympic dream comes unstuck due to finger-lips-superglue prank" …

o   Mindaugus Svarcas – “Let me do all the work now”

o   Ronald Vali – “You know the drill”

Despite this being the ‘off-season’ there was no shortage of excitement. Everyone was Facebooking furiously when a local New Zealand regatta saw Eric Murray beat the five-time World Champion Mahe Drysdale at his own game – the single. The finish was caught on film here.

Then Denmark’s Henrik Stephansen reset the record on the indoor rowing machine for lightweights and got the rowing world all abuzz with a 5:57.4. Cedric Berrest also proved popular when he was caught on film pulling a 5.44 on the rowing machine.

Back to checking out the updates…