Canadian rowers on a medal mission
‘We got the job done’: Crews look for Friday to be a big day on the water
It was a quarter-final race at last year’s world championships in France and the question Tom Morris posed to Lindsay Jennerich and Patricia Obee was simple and direct. Do you think you can do this? We do, they said without hesitation. So do I, their coach replied. And this is how their mission was born, a mission that comes to an end on Friday at Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio.
“That was an honest moment and, since then, that trust and honesty has only grown,” Morris said Thursday. “They’re different athletes than they were in 2012 (when they failed to make the A final in London). I think they’re the strongest they’ve ever been — mentally, emotionally, physically. They’re ready to go.
“We’ve always known we’ve had it. But we know we don’t need to use it unless we have to. We’ll use it tomorrow.”
Why not? The gold-medal race at the Olympics is as good a time as any.
On Thursday, the Canadian lightweight double of Jennerich and Obee punched their ticket to Friday’s A final, highlighting a solid day of rowing for the Canadians at the windswept course in Rio’s Leblon neighbourhood. In addition to Morris’s crew, the men’s four of Will Crothers, Conlin McCabe, Tim Schrijver and Kai Langerfeld booked their place in Friday’s A final and the women’s eight righted themselves by winning their repechage and qualifying for Saturday’s A final.
That was three boats for Canada and three A finals, with single sculler Carling Zeeman trying to join them on Friday.
“We got the job done,” said Martin McElroy, the fours coach and the head coach of the Canadian men’s team. “Now it’s on to the next step. We have three boats in there and to me that’s three medal chances.”
After winds and rain wiped out Wednesday’s races at Lagoa, Jennerich and Obee set the tone for Canada early on Thursday with a comfortable, confident performance in their semifinal. They fell behind the Dutch crew of Ilse Paulis and Maaike Head at the 500-metre mark, but stayed in touch through the rest of the course and ultimately finished second.
They also did their talking on the water. With the medal race 24 hours away, Jennerich and Obee didn’t speak to the media on Thursday, leaving Morris to fill in.
“We did what we needed to,” Morris said. “We’re in the final. There was no need to spend more energy than we needed to. We look forward to adding the extra gears tomorrow.”
Morris sounds part rowing coach, part Zen philosopher when he talks about his crew. The Aussie was brought in after Jennerich and Obee failed to make the A final at the Lucerne World Cup in 2015, and he’s made a difference.
“They’re exactly where I want them to be,” he said. “They’re in the best shape of their lives. They’ve come here to race three races and step it up each time and that’s what they’ve done.
“There’s something special about them. With pairs or doubles you have to have some magic and you have to be able to go a little crazy.” Crazy? Explain please. “It’s trusting yourself and the other person to be so in tune with each other that you can take yourself somewhere you couldn’t any other day,” Morris said. “It’s something you can’t simulate in training. You just have to have an almost infallible confidence it’s going to be all right. They go there, and they go there deeper than anyone I’ve ever seen before.”
The men’s four, meanwhile, qualified comfortably for Friday’s medal race, finishing second in their heat behind a strong British crew. The boat features McCabe and Crothers, who won silver in London four years ago in the heavyweight eight, which was disbanded for Rio. A third member of the London crew, Rob Gibson, rowed in a quad that failed to make the A final and finished second in the B final on Thursday.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed the quad didn’t get in,” McElroy said. “We thought with everything we saw in training they had that capacity, but that’s a competitive event.”
The four has stepped up after battling through an injury to Schrijver and uneven results in the World Cup races.
“We’ve just been steadily working away and we have a ticket to the dance now,” McElroy said. “The over-riding theme for the four has been stroke by stroke, day by day. We’ll see what happens.”