In the light men's doubles, Germany tried to make a case for themselves as frontrunners, posting the fastest time of the three heats, while fan favorites the Irish double took another heat, and Norway the third heat.
"We are pretty happy with this race. We did pretty much everything we wanted to do in this race, concentrating on the third 500 and making a push there, and it worked out well today," said stroke Jonny Rommelman.
Rommelman and his partner Jason Osborne were hesitant to read too much into their time today. "You see lots of different times in each heat, so you should be careful there. But, of course, with Italy being one of the medal favorites and us beating them directly, it gave us some confidence."
As with all of the lightweight rowers we talked with, Rommelman and Osborne pointed out that the thing that makes the lightweight events so incredibly competitive is that all the athletes have to be the same size.
"Weight loss and getting down to weight is like the race before the race, obviously," said Osborne. "Being limited to 70 kilos on average is, something that's making it a little extra harder doing the weight loss just before the race, and the fact that we are pretty much all level with our physique, that's a reason why it's as exciting as it is in the end."
In the hunt for Olympic gold, Osborne has collected a worlds gold medal in the lightweight single, and in the past year, he also won the international cycling union's first indoor Zwift cycling world championship, and has stated that he'd like to switch to cycling at some later point in his career, but when an interviewer asked him if he preferred to cool down by rowing or on the bike, he didn't bite.
Also in the lightweight men's mix are Ireland's Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy, almost certainly one of the favorites to win the event. O'Donovan has been called "pound for pound, the best rower in the world," probably the highest praise a lightweight could get.
We caught up with O'Donovan and McCarthy after the heats.
"Winning is always a good way to start things off, so you can't complain too much with that," said O'Donovan.
As far as perceiving any extra pressure during these Olympics, O'Donovan was pretty emphatic that he and McCarthy would be able to keep things in their lanes.
"Oh, no. Like, there's no point changing your training program or preparations based on what people think about us. That'd be kind of silly. We do what's best for our physiology and our fitness and preparations for the heat and stuff like this. We've still been trying to push out a bit and gain a bit more speed if we can which I'm sure, I mean, everybody's got to do that, so we'll find out now in the next week who's done the best job."
"We want to row and do well for ourselves, and not so that we can change people's opinions about us or keep people's opinions highly of us and this type of thing, you know. There's no point worrying about that."
The USA does not have a lightweight men's double competing in Tokyo.
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