With a typhoon predicted for the coming days, the racing schedule has been extensively shuffled. There will be no competition on Monday and Tuesday, and racing will resume on Wednesday with a full slate of semifinals and the first six medal races of the Olympics. The full revised schedule is here.
On to the racing; today was a big day, with six events determining their Olympic finalists, and another six fixing their semifinals. As it goes in rowing, for every crew that made it, there was a crew that didn't; we caught up with a few athletes from both sides today.
USA women's single Kara Kohler rowed a very business-like quarterfinal, pushing into the lead, before settling into a solid second (and safe qualifying position) behind Ireland's Sanita Purspure, the 2019 world champ. Asked whether her race tactics would change based on other scullers, Kohler said she would not.
"Really, I don’t know what other boats are doing," she said. "I’m just sensing them on the course. I don’t know that Sanita [Purspure, IRL W1x] was rating higher. I guess I could have assumed that considering I was rating pretty low. I was certainly very nervous."
So, was there a temptation to respond to Purspure and go for the win? "A little bit, but I also wanted to make sure I got into the finish line in a qualifying division. I could have had more of a sprint, but I didn’t."
Also moving on today for the US was the women's pair of Tracy Eisser and Megan Kalmoe, who rowed from a trailing position in their rep into second place and a semifinals slot. (See our features on today's racing for the US women's lightweight double, women's quad, women's double and women's four).
For seven-time Olympian Olaf Tufte of Norway, whose crew finished out of contention today in the Men's Quad, the overwhelming emotion was one of having let his crew down.
"I’m disappointed. I feel I didn’t do enough. At the moment, I feel I let the boys down. I’m supposed to take them to the final. But then, again, this is part of the game. The other guys managed a bit better than us. This is how good we are at 85, 90 percent. If you want to be at the top, you have to be good at 90 percent, 100 percent, but that almost never happens. This is our 85 percent, and that’s not good enough. We’ve done so many good things together with the coach and the team, so I’m just really sorry I didn’t manage to bring the boys."
Tufte won two Olympic gold medals in the single in 2004 and 2008, as well as silver and bronze in the double in 2000 and 2016, and raced his first Olympics in 1996.
Tufte's teammate, Kjetil Borch, won his quarterfinal to move on to the semi, but used his interview to pay tribute to Czech sculler Ondrej Synek, the 2016 M1x bronze medalist, who announced earlier this year that he would not be competing at the Olympics due to health problems.
"He got the coronavirus in November, I think, in Italy, and he hasn’t been himself, and it’s been quite a hard reminder for me how serious this virus can affect us as athletes because we don’t have a pension fund. We don’t have security," said Borch. "If your lungs get effed, you’re out, and he’s out. He’s one of the best scullers, one of the best rowers through all the times, and he’s out. I didn’t even recognize him on the course. It’s just someone totally different."
"I think it explains a lot about the previous two years."
For Iranian women's single sculler Nazanin Malaei, advancing to the semifinals was a dream result. "I’m happy – so happy. Today, I was trying hard, and I did it."
Until this spring, when she qualified for Tokyo via the Asian qualifying regatta, Nazanin had not raced at a world championships since the 2014 U23s, where she raced in the lightweight women's double.
"One coach said to me, 'You are not good for rowing. You are good for cox of the eight.' Athletes said to me, 'You can’t go to the Olympics and be a single, because every athlete in other countries coming to the Olympics is heavy and very strong, and you are very lightweight, and you can’t.' With this result, I am showing everybody and my country, if you want one goal, you can go every day, believe in yourself, you can do it."
Malaei's result is the best showing ever for Iran in Olympic rowing. When Malaei, who is racing Tokyo in a hijab, long sleeves and full leggings, was asked how she was doing in the heat, she just laughed. "Where we are, in my country, this is not hot."
Notes from the Course
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