Kiwi four still waiting on call
The possibility of a cobbledtogether Russian crew and time restraints - could stop the New Zealand men’s coxless four competing at the Olympic Games next week.
Rowing’s governing body, Fisa, has announced that only six Russian rowers - all men - will be permitted to compete at the 2016 Rio Olympics. That’s left the Russians with only one boat option - a men’s four - after the exclusion of 20 other rowers and two coxswains.
That ensured four Russian boats - lightweight men’s four, men’s eight, women’s eight and lightweight women’s double sculls - were ruled out of Rio and their places re-allocated to other nations.
Should Russia decide not to enter a men’s four, that place will be offered to the NZ crew of Anthony Allen, Patrick McInnes, Axel Dickinson and Drikus Conradie.
So the Kiwis continue to train at Lake Karapiro and wait, with Fisa expecting to hear from Russia over the next two days.
Rowing New Zealand chief executive Simon Peterson said on Wednesday he’d talked to Fisa executive director Matt Smith and the world governing body was expecting notification ‘‘tomorrow their time’’.
‘‘I don’t know if they’ve put a caveat on that or how they can enforce that,’’ Peterson said.
‘‘We’re relying completely on Fisa here - if the Russians shut down and don’t provide an answer, or take time to answer it’s obviously going to effect us.’’
Peterson said Monday loomed as D-day for sending the four to join the 11 New Zealand boats in Rio for the Olympic rowing regatta, which starts on August 6. The New Zealand team includes a men’s quad which gained their place at the Olympics via a Fisa reallocation after the Russian quad was disqualified following a positive drugs test by a crew member.
‘‘I’ve said to the guys all along that we’ll go as long as we can for them to attend the Olympics. I haven’t put a date in front of anyone, but you would probably feel that Monday next week is the last point in time.
‘‘They’d need to depart and arrive Monday to have time to set up their boat and prepare, to be fair to those athletes in terms of performance. So we’re not far away from that.’’
Peterson was pleased to confirm that Fisa will re-allocate the men’s four place should Russia not
enter a boat.
Of the six Russian men’s rowers allowed to compete in Rio, one - Aleksandr Chaukin - is a lightweight and hence highly unlikely to be considered for a heavyweight four. Vladislav Ryabcev has competed exclusively in recent years as a sculler, leaving four realistic options - Georgy Efremenko, Artem Kosov, Nikita Morgachev and Anton Zarutskiy - to form a four.
Fisa was given the power to decide which Russian athletes could compete, following the International Olympic Committee’s
decision to leave the issue of Russian participation up to individual sporting federations, in the wake of the country’s recent doping scandal. Three Russian rowers had been excluded earlier in the week, two for having previous doping sanctions, and one for having been implicated in doping by the McLaren report. None of the 28 rowers entered by Russia had been found to have tested positive in the past five years, but doubts over the reliability of Wada’s Moscow laboratory raised by the McLaren report led Fisa to exclude the majority of the original team.