Durham world champion Nathaniel Reilly-O'Donnell looks ahead to this weekend's Rowing World Cup in Italy

JUST over two weeks ago, Stokesley’s Kat Copeland and I brought back gold as part of the most successful British Rowing team performance at the European Championships.

The following day we were treated to a day off, but since then it’s been all go to prepare for our next bout of racing.

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THIS coming weekend, our team will race in Varese, Italy, at the second regatta of the Rowing World Cup series.

The Rowing World Cup series is always used as a way for our team to prepare for the summer’s main event – either the World Champs or an Olympic Games.

This year, we hope to be selected as part of the team racing in early September at the World Champs in Aiguebelette, France. This World Champs also doubles up at the qualifier for the 2016 Rio Olympics – while our name on the seat isn’t guaranteed, we must pre-qualify the boat class to have any hope to challenge for the ultimate title.

The races in the World Cup series allow us to gauge crews from the other leading nations and adjust our race strategies to discover our fastest race profile.

Competition will be fierce with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all sending their top crews to assert their positions ahead of the World Champs.

The race at Lake Varese, near Milan, will also be an opportunity for retribution for crews that didn’t get the result they wanted at the European Champs.

Durham’s Jess Eddie and Richmond’s Zoe Lee and their women’s eight will be in that camp. In their European final they were in a good position to strike for a bronze medal but with rough conditions, a ‘crab’ was caught and their opposition were able to pass by.

Chester-le-Street’s Will Fletcher will want to keep up his strong start after his European silver medal. A strong Norwegian double will be snapping at his heels while he and his crewmate, Rich, try to close the gap to the in-form French crew.

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IN these final days before racing I try to be quite structured in training while being pretty relaxed off the water.

When race day arrives, we aim to just press repeat on the great stuff we know we can deliver in training.

Our warm-up row acts as a wake-up and tune-up, our pre-race briefing really just reinforces what we have already discussed over the previous week and the race is about getting down our 12m-wide, 2,000m long lane as fast as we can.

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YOU can see all the Rowing World Cup II A-finals live on Sunday morning on the BBC red button and on BBC 2 from late morning.

If you fancy seeing rowers race in the North this weekend, then head down to the river in York city centre for the York Summer Regatta.