News

Posted: August 9, 2016

All four Scots racing on Monday in the Olympic rowing regatta made progress to the next round of their events.

Defending Olympic champion Heather Stanning from Lossiemouth and her partner Helen Glover were pushed all the way in their opening coxless pairs heat by Denmark, but managed to come through at the finish line to take first place by under a second ahead of Denmark and maintain their four-year unbeaten record.  In being pushed all the way to the line, the British duo posted the fastest time of the three opening heats, with the other winners being New Zealand and USA.

Afterwards, Stanning said, "we were just going out to get the first race done.  It wasn't necessarily the race that everyone expected to see, but it's the Olympics and everyone steps up their game.  We won - that's what we needed to do and we're into the semi-final.  It's all about the final at the end of the day and it's important that we get there in good shape."

Addressing the issue of their unbeaten record, she added, "it was all very calm, it wasn't frantic or anything.   It doesn't matter that we're unbeaten - it's a nice statistic to have, but as long as we win the important races, that's all that matters for us.  Anyway, the expectations we put on ourselves are much greater than anyone else can out on us."

Earlier the British women's eight - with Karen Bennett and Polly Swann aboard, both from Edinburgh - won their opening heat to take the only available slot for the direct route to Saturday's final.

They were third off the start behind early leaders New Zealand and the Netherlands, but produced a well-managed performance to eventually take the lead with three-quarters of the race gone and cross the line almost three seconds ahead.

Swann analysed the performance saying, "we're all really pleased.  Maybe we didn't get the fastest start in comparison to the other crews, but they all worked pretty hard to get the jump on us at the start.  Just coming through that middle  thousand metres where we know we're strong, we could just feel the other girls working too hard.   We're a group who want to go fastest from A to B and that's how we managed it .  We didn't let the (Olympic) atmosphere of what's going on about us affect us.  We're trying to think of it as just being Strathclyde Park regatta!"

Bennett agreed with her Scottish crew-mate, saying "we knew the last thousand metres is the strongest part of our race so we just knew if we just kept our heads and just believed every single stroke and kept our cool the whole way down we'd come through at the end."

Meanwhile, the outstanding USA women's eight - double Olympic champions and unbeaten for ten years - won the other heat in a time three second faster.

At the start of the day's racing Glasgow's Commonwealth champion Angus Groom became the first of the eight Scots in the rowing squad to reach a final, when the British men's quadruple sculls crew came second in their second-chance repechage race behind Germany.  The British quartet were fourth off the start but moved through the field to claim their medal chance in the first rowing final of the event tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.

Groom said afterwards, "we're really eyeing a medal now.  We're feeling a lot more confident in what we're doing.  We've just got one more step left to go and we're ready to take it."  Speaking about the pressure of the repechage race he added, "that was six boats racing for two spots in the final, so it was almost do-or-die.  You've got to go into these races not thinking about that but delivering what you're capable of."

Other British qualifiers yesterday were the men's eight, men's four and men's lightweight double scullers.  However, the women's lightweight double scullers now depend on Tuesday's repechage to make progress

Tuesday's programme also sees Alan Sinclair and Katherine Grainger racing their semi-finals.

Article by Mike Haggerty. Photographs courtesy of Peter Spurrier/Intersport Images

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