Time to race hard...and fast!

After two days of heats we approach the business end of the flatwater racing at Shunyi today with Australia lining up in three semi final events. K1 1000, C1 1000 and K4 1000.

After his second place to Olympic champion, Larsen, in the heats on Monday Ken Wallace will be the first Aussie to race when he lines up in the 1000m semi final at 3:30.

Ken is working into the week's racing and will no doubt be buoyed by a fast hit out yesterday in the 500m heats when he posted the third fastest time. For the record, Adam Van Koeverden posted a new world's best time in 1:35.554 with Vereckei of Hungary half a second back and Ken a very close third in 1:36.208.

Torsten Lachmann has semi finals in both the 1000m and 500m event to look forward to and will tackle the longer distance at 4pm today.

Finally, the K4 1000m semi final will be an important stepping stone for the men's K4 as they aim to go through to Friday's final.

After their straight to final qualification from the K4 heats on Monday, our women have a day's rest from racing and will do a light session in the K4 this morning to stay on top of their game.

Hannah Davis and Lyndsie Fogarty matched the K4 performance in their K2 yesterday and were clearly happy to qualify direct to Staurday's final and avoid a semi final .

In other races yesterday, Chantal Meek in K1 500 and Clint Robinson and Jacob Clear in K2 500 moved through to the semi finals comfortably and will race in their respective semi finals on Thursday.

There have been no major suprises through the first two days of racing with the heats only cutting 10 of the 124 starters out of the running in the 500m events ysterday.

Conditions have been good, the mountains just in view at the top end of the lake and a very light variable breeze barely rippling the surface.

Following races our media liaison officer, David Pembroke, has been steering our athletes to the ABC radio desk for comments, so stay tuned for more action on the airwaves as well as the small screen!

Our growing number of supporters have been both visible and vocal in the stands holding their own with the other clusters of die hard supporters, including the drum beating Hungarians. Keep up the good work!

For those watching at home, some of the images are generated by a small team of Aussies operating the "fly cam" which flies on a cable from the finish line diagonally across the course. Fly Cam also covered the rowing and have been inundated with requests to cover major events.

After the build up it is finally time to race hard and fast...