By the time you're reading this the breakfast tables (and for sure the press box) at Henley will be buzzing with the news that the stroke seat of the Russian men's quad, Sergej Fedorovtsev, has tested positive for trimetazidine, a metabolic modulator in section 4 of the banned substances list. A press release was issued around midnight Central European Time as Thursday melted into Friday.
The fall-out has been quick and brutal: the RUS M4x, which earned a Rio spot at the FOQR, has been disqualified, and third-placed New Zealand reinstated behind Canada in second. Nathan Flannery, Jade Uru, George Bridgewater and John Storey are now all going to Rio after all.
This confirms rumours which had been circulating that Rowing New Zealand had brought three crews back from retirement and vacation "just in case". The other two, to save you googling, are the NZ women's quad (third behind China and Ukraine) and the men's four (third behind South Africa and France). Russia have not qualified for the W4x but bagged a worlds place in the M4-, so it is possible that there are other positive A-samples with their B-tests in the pipeline- but with three third-place crews from the final qualifier, NZ are returning to training until they know for certain.
Note that the rules are for the next-placed crew to be recalled if a crew's positive test results in them being removed from a qualifying regatta such as the worlds or FOQR, but that "a number of factors can be used" when deciding how to replace a crew whose drug test bans them now, yet was done at a non-qualifying event (e.g. a World Cup or European championships. Loads of tests from the recent events are still being processed and will be until the eve of the Olympic regatta.