Australia's rowers produced a medal rush of epic proportions on Day 5 of the Olympic Games and they're attributing their success to a forced training change.
The Women's Four of Lucy Stephan, Rosemary Popa, Jessica Morrison & Annabelle McIntyre started the morning off with a gold medal that had been a number of years in the making.
The crew had been World Champions throughout the last Olympic cycle and the victory capped off a completely dominant period for the boat.
The Men's Four of Alex Purnell, Spencer Turrin, Jack Hargreaves & Alex Hill then joined in the fun by also claiming gold in a race that also had a nail-biting finish.
To top off the morning, the Men's and Women's Quadruple Sculls took out bronze as they both hung on to finish in third.
It was part of one of Australia's most successful days in Olympic Games history with seven medals in total.
For the rowers, in particular, it was a rewarding achievement because of the amount of work that has gone into their training over the last two years.
Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, this is the first time that Australia's rowers have been able to compete against the rest of the world.
Many believed that this would have a severe impact on their Olympic campaign as they wouldn't be able to see where they were placed in comparison to other crews from around the world.
However, it's turned out to be the exact opposite. They've been able to watch the rest of the world, and no one has been able to watch them.
In the last Olympic cycle, Rowing Australia took a "centralised" approach according to Jessica Morrison.
Rowing Australia has established two national training centres for their athletes over the last few years. One in Canberra for the Men and one in Penrith for the Women.
In the 2020-21 period, Rowing Australia had 17 men and 15 women in those two centres, dedicating their life to the sport.
As part of one of Australia's most successful crews in that time, Morrison believes it's a big reason they've had so much success in the last five years.
"I guess since Rio, our program has become centralised," Morrison said.
"We’ve all trained together which is different from before and it has really benefitted all of our crews.
"Being able to push each other and train at the same place. As a result, we’re seeing a lot of success.
"Today was such a good day for Team Australia and I have no doubt that this momentum will carry on to the next Olympic cycle."
For Jack Hargreaves, he admits there were some nerves in the Men's Four crew heading into their first heat.
Not knowing exactly how they'd stack up against the other boats was a daunting prospect. But in hindsight, he believes it was a much tougher task for those crews to know what to expect from Australia.
"In our heat, we were pretty nervous to get that one out of the way, just to see where we stand," he said.
"We’ve got a pretty strong squad back in Australia so we’ve done a lot of racing against them.
"We haven’t been starved of racing back home and we could watch the racing overseas so we saw it as an advantage to us.
"We knew how fast everyone was but they didn’t know how fast we were."
Luke Letcher, a member of the Men's Quadruple Sculls team, described the lack of international competition as "freedom".
The ability to solely focus on their preparation without the distraction of travel or races thrown in had the Australian boats at their prime heading into Tokyo.
What many felt was going to impact Australia's chances, actually helped them
"We’ve had a lot of freedom to do our training in Australia," Letcher said.
"The coronavirus situation has been reasonably under control for a lot of our preparations so we’ve had the freedom to train well, get the kilometres done and get prepared in silence on the other side of the world."
It was anything but silent once the teams started winning medals on Wednesday.
The whole Australian squad is such a close group that each time they had success, it spurred the next boat on to do well.
"The Men’s Four was our main competitors when we’re doing pieces back home," said Caleb Antill, one of Letcher's teammates in the Quadruple Sculls.
"To see them come flying down while we’re warming up out in front was awesome.
"It gave us confidence that we could be up there. It’s a testament to us as a team to see those four medals in one day."
The Australian team will be hoping that it's not the end of the medal rush in Tokyo.
The Men's and Women's Eight have both made it through to the A Final after getting through their Repechage races.
This could become the start of one of Australia's most dominant periods in international rowing.
