Rowers secure spot at Games
SARAH Hawe and her women’s four crew members have achieved their first mission at the rowing world championships by qualifying the boat for next year’s Olympics.
Now the quartet are aiming to recapture the title they won two years ago when they contest the A final tonight.
The women’s four was one of five boats Australia has already qualified for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo at the world championships in Austria.
Hawe, Lucy Stephan, Katrina Werry and Olympia Aldersey booked their tickets with a start-to-finish victory in their semi-final last night, moving into a third consecutive A-final in the new Olympic boat class.
“We are very happy to have qualified the women’s four for Tokyo,” Hawe said.
“I’ve been in the four for the last three years so it’s the culmination of three years of work that has now paid off.
“We went out there to execute our race plan to the best of our ability, trusting what we know works for us.
“Our next task moving forward is to improve on the semi to have our best race yet in the A-final.”
Though the crew won their heat by finishing more than three seconds ahead of Denmark, their time of 6:25.34 was the third-quickest of the semis, with semi-final two winners Netherlands and Poland both going under mark.
Australia narrowly missed going back-to-back at last year’s event, when it was edged out by America and had to settle for silver.
Tasmania’s other representative at the world championships, Georgia Nesbitt, will contest the B final in the lightweight double scull alongside Sarah Pound.
The duo, who will start in lane six, need to win to qualify the boat for Tokyo, and must make up nearly six seconds after recording the slowest time in the semi-finals.
Nesbitt and Pound will take on crews from South Africa, Canada, Switzerland, Italy and America in the winner-takesall scenario. Australia’s women’s pair (Annabelle McIntyre and Jessica Morrison) was the first boat to qualify for the Olympics, with the women’s eight, men’s four, men’s quad scull and PR3 mixed coxed four following suit. the Australians’