Irish crews continue to make progress

ROWING/World Championships: Wins for the lightweight men's four and the lightweight women's double yesterday brought Ireland's representation in the semi-finals at the World Rowing Championships at Eton up to three crews. The heavyweight four compete in their semi-final today (2.01pm).

The lightweight four bounced back from an unexpected defeat to China in Monday's heats with a fine row which left the other qualifiers, South Africa, out of contention for a win by halfway.

The Irish crew of Gearóid Towey, Eugene Coakley, Richard Archibald and Paul Griffin is finding positives in the extra day's race practice, and think it may be the possibility of being caught on the hop in their first race is a risk for crews who want to peak on finals day.

"We took a gamble going into the heat in that we didn't do a massive load of speed work," said Towey. "We kind of kept it low key. We didn't expect the Chinese to go so fast, but having said that we had a repechage and we used it as a race work out. We were going to do work today anyway - if we made it straight through. So, we had a good row today, nice and solid. We did everything we wanted to do. And we feel pretty good now."

Was yesterday a better row than the heat? "Yeah, I mean, the way we wanted it to go was to get better as the week went on," he said. "Today felt sharp enough - but not exactly semi-final sharp, which is what we want to be on Friday. We've gauged our preparation to be going our fastest on Sunday."

To get to Sunday involves a difficult semi-final which sees them take on France and Germany - the silver and bronze medallists behind Ireland at the final World Cup in Lucerne - along with Britain, the United States and Poland. Three go through.

"We've beaten them all before, so we're going to go out there and try and do it again," said Towey.

And maybe it would be better to meet the Chinese in the final? "We're not really thinking about the Chinese at all at the moment. We just want to get into the final . . . We want to put those crews that we beat in Lucerne behind us and then if the Chinese are in the final on Sunday, hopefully tackle them there," Towey concluded.

Niamh Ní Cheilleachair and Sinead Jennings, in the lightweight double, did their own bit of giant killing yesterday, by beating world champions Germany in their repechage. The two crews were a class above the rest and both were set for qualification from the early stages, as Germany set the pace. But the Irish had Marie-Louise Draeger and Daniela Reimer in their sights in the second quarter; passed them in the third and, sculling impressively, extended their lead to 3.7 seconds.

Ní Cheilleachair said the decision to go hell for leather for a win was not an attempt to get a better lane draw in the semi-finals on a course which can be unfair in certain conditions. "We had a race plan and we stuck to it," she explained. "Part of that plan was to beat the Germans."

The lightweight men's double scull of Tim Harnedy and Richard Coakley lost their chance of a medal by finishing third in their repechage. Turkey showed great speed early on to keep on the tail of Cuba, but the US tucked into second near the end. As Turkey faded, Harnedy and Coakley closed up into third.

The three Irish boats had barely completed their repechages when the organisers cancelled the rest of the programme because of rising winds. Seán Jacob will now go today in his C/D semi-finals.

Today the Irish heavyweight four will have to produce an exceptional performance in what is a difficult semi-final. The all-conquering Britain crew would be expected to move easily through, with Germany, Slovenia, Canada, Italy and Ireland fighting it out for the other two A places.

Results

Men Lightweight Four - Repechages (First two to semi-finals) - Repechage One: 1 Canada 6:12.10, 2 Poland 6:14.77. Repechage Two: Britain 6:13.12, 2 Netherlands 6:15.85. Repechage Three: 1 Italy 6:10.27, 2 USA 6:12.42. Repechage Four: 1 Ireland (G Towey, E Coakley, R Archibald, P Griffin) 6:12.91, 2 South Africa (B Turvey, L Ndlovu, R Macdonald, T Paladin) 6:15.82, 3 Austria 6:18.28, 4 Chile 6:24.65.

Lightweight Double Scull - Repechage One (First two to semi-finals A/B/C; rest to Semi-Finals D/E): 1 Cuba (Y Perez, E Batista) 6:36.87, 2 United States (C Lowry, D Urevick-Ackelsberg) 6:40.06, 3 Ireland (R Coakley, T Harnedy) 6:42.06, 4 Turkey 6:43.89, 5 China 6:48.66.

Women Lightweight Double Scull - Repechages (First two to semi-finals A/B) - Repechage One: 1 Ireland (S Jennings, N Ni Cheilleachair) 7:17.26, 2 Germany (D Reimer, M-L Draeger) 7:20.96, 3 Italy 7:26.89, 4 Uzbekhistan 7:52.36. Repechage Two: 1 Canada (M Jones, T Cameron) 7:17.78, 2 Britain (J Hall, H Casey) 7:17.85. Repechage Three: 1 Finland (S Sten, M Nieminen) 7:21.92, 2 Spain (L Guillen Cruz, S Boubeta) 7:25.42. Repechage Four: 1 Greece (C Biskitzi, A Tsiavou) 7:19.80, 2 Sweden (L Karlsson, S Karlsson) 7:22.90.

Today's programme (Irish interest) 9.48 - Men's Single Sculls, Semi-Final C/D: Sean Jacob (D final at 2.54; C Final 3.18) 2.01 - Men's Four Semi-Final A/B: Cormac Folan, Seán O'Neill, Seán Casey, Alan Martin.