Women give SA rowers something to crow about

KIRSTEN McCann and Ursula Grobler produced a glittering finale at the world rowing championships in France yesterday as they bagged South Africa’s only medal.

The lightweight double scullers fought desperately to take bronze and put behind them the painful fourth place of a year ago.

SA’s two other medal contenders on the day — defending lightweight men’s double scull champions James Thompson and Jon Smith, and the women’s pair of Naydene Smith and Lee-Ann Persse — ended fourth and fifth.

The regatta at Aiguebelette also doubled as a qualifier for the 2016 Rio Olympics, and four SA boats booked their places, but in terms of medals this was a step down from the gold and bronze clinched at the 2014 edition.

Thompson and Smith were never in contention for a medal. Normally strong finishers, they were unable to reproduce their trademark kick and ended almost two seconds short of the podium. “Jon was a bit offcolour, but to have a bad row and still finish fourth is not bad,” said SA coach Roger Barrow.

“The double sculls are our top two boats, but for next year we’ve got to find a third medal.”

In the women’s pairs, Smith and Persse placed fifth, one po- sition better than last year, but more than six seconds off the bronze medal pace.

The lightweight women’s double sculls was SA’s last chance for silverware, and McCann and Grobler delivered in dramatic style.

Famous for their fast starts, they are also notorious for fad- ing at the finish, and after leading through the midway 1 000m mark, they were overtaken by champions New Zealand.

The British took them in the final 500m, but when the Canadians made a late charge, the SA duo battled defiantly to secure the biggest success of their partnership to date.

Grobler had won a world championship medal before, but that was in a non-Olympic class boat while representing the US in 2010.

David Hunt and Shaun Keeling dominated for most of the men’s pairs B-final, but they had to survive a strong French challenge to win by less than a second. That was good enough to qualify the boat, third at the 2014 world championships, for the Olympics.

The SA men’s fours, a new combination that started only this year, won the C-final in their best time of the regatta.

If they can improve by eight more seconds in the next 11 months, they could be medal contenders in Brazil.

But first they must book their place at a final Olympic qualifying regatta next year.