Four more events crowned their Olympic champs in Tokyo on Thursday, while the last set of semifinals set the last set of Olympic finals in the men's and women's singles.
It was windy again today, and their were a few unexpected (and a few mostly "expected") results, as well as a few historic firsts. Read on!
Men's Pair
In their third Olympics, and in their third different boat class, the Croatian brothers Martin & Valent Sinkovic were aiming for their third podium. The Croatians blasted out of the gates and never looked back to take the win, while behind them, two new, young combinations from Romania and Denmark took the silver and bronze.
"This feels pretty much the same," said Valent Sinkovic after the race, when asked how today's result compared to their gold in Rio five years ago in the Men's Double. "It's an unbelievable feeling, hard to describe. This is like a new gold medal for us because it's in a second discipline, so we celebrate it like it's the first one for us."
On Paris 2024, the Sinkovics were succinct. "No more pair," said Martin - who was thrown into the water by his brother after they embraced on the dock - talk about a big cox toss.
Read what they had to say here: Interview: Croatia's Sinkovic Brothers - 'No More Pair'.
For the Danes, it was a rare Danish heavyweight medal, and the first medal for Denmark in the event since 1968.
See our short interview with them here: Interview: Denmark M2-, Joachim Sutton & Frederic Vystavel.
Women's Pair
In the women's pair, it was the 2018 world champs, Caileigh Filmer and Hillary Janssens from Canada who made the race early, leading to the 1000m mark, before the event favorites Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler pushed through in the third 500, leaving Canada and the ROC (Russian Olympic Committee) to battle for silver and bronze.
At the line it was New Zealand, with the Russian crew second and Canada third.
"We just wanted to go out there and have the best race that we could, and we could be happy with that no matter what the expectation," said Gowler. "We were aware of the expectation on us - I think we put a lot of expectation on ourselves as well. We just know that once we line up, it's just us and we've trained for that."
The crew is doubling into the NZ women's eight tomorrow, so it was back to practice after the race. "We will be back out; we'll go for a quick row on the eight just to start flipping our minds to tomorrow," said Prendergast. "I think it will be an enjoyable row and another form of celebration for us, which will be a different from than what most other crews would do, but good for us."
For Canada, bronze was the result of dealing with two long years of training, isolation from racing, and injuries.
"We had a really long extra year," said Janssens. "Caileigh had a bike crash and broke her collar bone. I was probably on the spin bike for three months with a disc injury. So we spent a lot of time on the spin bikes. We just had to believe that if we built enough fitness, then we knew how to row. We had shown it before, that we could compete against the best."
As far as their race plan went, Filmers said it was simple. "The plan was to make it hurt until the 1000."
The US entry in the event, Tracy Eisser and Megan Kalmoe, finished fourth in the B-Final earlier in the morning, for 10th place overall.
Read our interview with them here: Interview with the US Women's Pair: Committing to the Pair, Fairness, Retirement (or Not...).
Lightweight Men's Double
It was a day for bold starts, and in the final of the Lightweight Men's Double, the German duo of Jason Osborne and Jonny Rommelman did just that, leading the favored Irish combination of Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy well down the track before the Irish pulled through for their country's first ever gold medal in rowing at the Olympics, and Ireland's first gold of the Tokyo Games.
For the German crew, there were no regrets. "I think we gave them their money's worth out there," said Rommelman after the racing. It was Germany's first Olympic medal in this event.
The Irish crew are hugely popular in the rowing world, and their win seemed to resonate around the boatyard. At the press conference, Paul O'Donovan reflected on why he felt he and McCarthy were not really affected by the Olympic postponement and COVID lockdown.
"It's not been tough at all to be honest, because we were planning on rowing anyway this year, and so when they didn't cancel the whole thing and they said it's going ahead we were like 'that's fine, that's been in our plan anyway'," said O'Donovan.
"And actually last summer, because of all the lockdowns we got to spend a long time down home in Skibbereen for the summer, which usually we're away going to regattas and this type of thing. West Cork and Skibbereen is brilliant in the sunshine and the summer, we don't get to experience all that to the full. So we got all that there last summer, and had the rowing things again this year so it's been quite an enjoyable time for us."
Read our interview with McCarthy and O'Donovan here: Interview: Irish Lightweight Double--What's up with that Grip? and more.
Lightweight Women's Double
In what was one of the closest races for the medals we have seen in a long time, Italy, France, and the Netherlands prevailed in a light women's double final that had 1.96 seconds separating all six crews, and exactly one second separating the top five crews. At least a couple got caught up in the chop in the final strokes (the Netherlands, the US), which contributed to the final finishing order. The US crew of Michelle Sechser and Molly Reckford finished fifth overall, 0.51 out of the medals.
The margin between the Netherlands for bronze and Great Britain for fourth: one one-hundredth of a second.
This was Italy's first-ever women's Olympic medal in rowing; Italy had won 40 medals in men's rowing.
We spoke a few days ago to the Dutch double of about the world record they held coming into the regatta, and the duo saw their previous record fall over and over again this week.
2016 Olympic champion Ilse Paulis was a total pro about seeing the record broken; "I think setting the world record gave us a huge boost of confidence - and I think that it is a brilliant show of sportsmanship that it has been broken here again by so many teams," she said after the race.
France won the first women's rowing medal in 25 years in the event, taking silver; Claire Bove said "It is quite special to bring home a medal. It's a medal that hasn't been won for many, many years, it's true. I hadn't thought about that. It has been a long time since the French female team has won a medal in rowing. It makes it all the more important. There are so many French women and so many French people who we have won this medal for. It's great. It is not just for us but for a lot of French women, too."
Her crewmate Laura Tarantola described her crew's head-down approach and the long moment before they knew they had won before sharing her preferred weight-making-breaking meal.
"It was a bit tight between us. The race was totally amazing for us. We just wanted to go as fast as possible and see after the finish. The race was totally crazy. When we passed the line, we didn't know the results. We waited a long, long second, and after we were so happy about the result.
"It is a goal to be in Paris. For the moment, I am going to go on holiday and eat a lot of chutney."
Finally, Italian gold medalist Valentina Rodini distilled their result in the simplest and most clear terms.
"What we wanted to do was the best we possibly could. We wanted to achieve the best possible result, and I think we succeeded in achieving that goal," Rodini said.
Men's Four Skeg Malfunction Followup
Men's four coach Tim McLaren spoke to us today about the skeg problem that affected the men's four yesterday; the skeg was the same setup that the USA bronze medal London 2012 four, also coached by McLaren, used in training and at the Games. McLaren said that the fin had required realigning this week.
"It was a bit deeper and provided a bit more stability in the wind, and was better for steering," he said. "We all agreed on that, and although decisions about equipment, rigging, and other things are done in collaboration, and most coaches seek feedback from the guys, but that is with the general understanding that the responsibility is not theirs, it still rests with the coach, and I feel very badly about how it transpired.
"We trained with it and we raced with it, and the adjustments we had to do weren't way off the charts. The guys just want to work hard and race, and they feel like the steering equipment let them down. The guys are angry, sad, frustrated, and disappointed, and I share that, though I feel most for the guys because we know these opportunities don't come around very often, and this opportunity is gone. We felt we had more in us; a lot of things can happen in racing, and we have seen a lot of disappointment here (in Tokyo), and equipment failure shouldn't be one of them."
Singles Semifinals
The singles semifinals for the men and women proved once again what a different animal the Olympics are; both the 2019 Men's and Women's world champions in the events, Germany's Oliver Zeidler and Ireland's Sanita Purspure, failed to make the final.
We spoke to Kara Kohler after her race, in which she placed fourth, a half-second out of contention for the A final.
Kara Kohler: It was a shaky start. I struggled to get off the line cleanly in this regatta. The crosswind has challenged me, and it challenged me again today, and I was dropped pretty quickly, so that was not a great place to start. That was rough, but I definitely kept fighting. I tried everything I had, but it was a little short today. I'm very disappointed, but I did what I could.
row2k: You did look like you were punching back into the field in the middle of the race. Can you talk a little bit what it's like in these conditions? It's pretty wild out there.
Kohler: I did struggle to stay off the port buoy line with the crosswind. It's nothing I haven't practiced in, but I was struggling to stay straight in the lane, and then I did hit the buoy, right before the 1,500. I lost my oar for a moment and was able to get it back, so that slowed me down a bit. Yeah, there were tricky conditions, but that's what you have to prepare for. You have to be ready for all conditions, and these certainly aren’t the worst conditions we could race in.
row2k: Watching yesterday's racing, did you think, "I may be rowing in these types of conditions"? How do you face up to that, especially as a single sculler?
Kohler: I knew there would be similar conditions to yesterday, and I did watch racing and saw that the people who handled them went incredibly fast, and that the struggle was with steering, so that was definitely at the forefront of my mind, but it was so tricky. I was prepared for it, but didn't handle it, I feel, to the best of my ability.
row2k: With the depth in the draw, your semi could have been a final. Can you take any consolation from that?
Kohler: Yeah, I guess just knowing that the women's single scull is an incredibly deep field, and that it's anyone's game. There's no clear favorite; well, it seems like Emma is right now, but coming in, it was anyone's guess who could be in the A final contending for the medal. It's such a tough field, and I'm proud I can be a part of it and be right there. I'm very disappointed that I can't race for a medal tomorrow, but that's what racing is.
Notes from the Course
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