Delay no trouble for Obee, Jenner
Elk Lake-based rowers reach semifinals, while Victoria’s Broder shines on the beach
Victoria rowers Lindsay Jennerich and Patricia Obee brushed off the scheduling chaos in Rio to win their preliminary race Monday and advance to the semifinals in the women’s lightweight double sculls at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The race had been shifted from Sunday because of adverse weather conditions. The delay did not seem to bother the two Islanders. But their disappointment at the 2012 London Olympics — where Jennerich and Obee failed to make the final after winning silver at the 2011 world championships — is still acutely felt and hung like a cloud over the race and informed their approach.
“It was a well-executed race,” said Jennerich, a graduate of Claremont Secondary and the University of Victoria Vikes rowing program.
“That’s what we wanted to do. We had some demons to push out [from London]. The goal this time was just to have the confidence that we trained to do it classy. We trained to do it patiently. We trained to do it with confidence. I think we did that today.”
Obee, a Stelly’s Secondary graduate out of the University of Washington Huskies program, concurred.
“We didn’t have a great leadup to the 2012 Olympics. It was both of our first Olympics and we were really nervous. We weren’t able to control the first-Olympics nerves,” said Obee. They did this time. “We wanted to show ourselves that it wasn’t the Olympics that created that [nervousness]. It was our poor leadup. We wanted to show ourselves we could do it,” said Obee.
They did just that Monday, despite having to wait a day. It was contamination in the Lagoa River, not high wind, that was supposed to be the potential issue in rowing. But adverse conditions forced postponement of all Sunday rowing in the Games.
The Elk Lake-based men’s four, fourth at the 2015 world championships, were second in their preliminary race Monday and moved on to the semifinals. The 2012 London Olympic silver-medallist and 2015 world championship bronze-medallist Canadian women’s eight — with Caileigh Filmer and Christine Roper of Victoria and UVic Vikes product Antje von Seydlitz of Terrace — was a disappointing third in its opening race and must now try to reach the final through the repechage later in the week. The Elk Lake-based men’s quad was fifth in its repechage and eliminated from medal contention.
Meanwhile, veteran nationalteam captain Fred Winters of Victoria opened against the arch-rival U.S. as Canada returned to the Olympics in men’s indoor volleyball for the first time since Barcelona in 1992. It was an eyeopener as Canada stunned the Americans 3-0 in sets on Sunday.
Jamie Broder of Victoria and Kristina Valjas of Toronto rallied to upset the higher-ranked Italian duo of Laura Giombini and Marta Menegatti 15-21, 21-18, 15-9 in Pool D to open in women’s beach volleyball Sunday amid the spectacular setting of Copacabana Beach.
Broder, who began her volleyball career at Claremont Secondary before playing at Vancouver Island University, and Valjas literally had a simple plan.
“We kind of said to each other that we knew the job that we had to do, and to just keep it simple,” said Valjas.
“In defence, Jamie had her job, I had mine. I got some blocks, she got some digs. Getting our serves in [in the second and third sets] was a key thing. We missed so many in the first set. That’s our game and we did a really good job of that. If we play like we know we can, we can beat anybody.”
The Canadian men’s field hockey team — with UVic Vikes products Brenden Bissett, Matthew Sarmento and Keegan Pereira — fell to 0-2 following Monday’s 3-1 loss to Americas’ regional power Argentina. The Canadians opened Saturday with a 6-2 loss against two-time defending Olympic champion Germany.