I need to do soul searching says Zac (From Cotswold Journal)

I need to do soul searching says Zac

1:18pm Wednesday 8th August 2012 in Sport

ZAC Purchase maintains he will reassess his future in the sport after he and Mark Hunter lost their Olympic title in the men’s lightweight double sculls in the cruellest of circumstances.

Maybe fate had already conspired not to smile on the British duo as a mechanical fault to Purchase’s seat forced the race to be restarted.

Whatever distraction that had caused it initially did not seem to affect the defending champions as they stormed out in front, enjoying a lead of more than a second at the 500- metre and 1,500m marks.

But, bit by bit, the Danish pair of Mads Rasmssen and Rasmus Quist clawed their way back and took the lead with 50m remaining, leaving the British duo with no means to fight back.

A devastated Purchase could barely articulate the pain of being forced to stand second on the podium.

“I need to do a lot of soul searching now,” said the former Evesham Rowing Club star from Tewkesbury.

“I will take some time away from the sport and decide if I want to continue.

This hurts like hell, more than anything else I have ever experienced, and maybe further down the line I will be proud of this but at the moment it does not feel like that.

“Our malfunctioning seat at the start was a bit of a shock, I’m not going to lie.

It’s not often you have an equipment failure in a major competition, though it’s not unknown in training.”

That was not the only thing that did not go to plan for the pair this year after finishing sixth at two World Cup regattas.

But as Olympic and world champions, the duo were confident.

Having breezed through their heats, semi-finals and 1,700 metres of the final, that seemed to be the case but silver was absolutely no consolation to Purchase.

The 26-year-old added: “When you put everything in and you lose, there is no hiding place.

“We’ll spend days, weeks, months, the rest of our lives, trying to work out if we could have done more.”