Irish heavy four advance to the B final

The Irish men’s heavyweight four (M4-) of Alan Martin (NUIG), Sean Casey (Muckross), Cormac Folan (NUIG), and Sean O’Neill (St.Michael’s) placed sixth in their semi-final of the Rowing World Championships in Munich this morning to progress to Saturday’s B final (places seven to twelve) where they will race for Olympic qualification.

The top five of the six crews racing in that B final will qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

As predicted the Dutch and New Zealand crews led out the field establishing a slender lead of just under a second halfway point. The Irish four were right in the race for third place at that point occupying fifth marginally behind Slovenia and Australian with the Germans holding their fire in sixth.

By the time the crews reached the 1500m mark the Kiwi four had snatched the lead from the Dutch with the fight for third continuing.

The Irish four tried to stay in contact with the Slovenians and the Australians as they pushed on with the Germans charging through on the stand side. As the line approached the Irish had slipped to sixth where they finished.

After racing Cormac Folan reflected on the race: "We got out fast out of the blocks, that’s something we’ve been working on. We were in the mix and just fighting to stay in there. The Slovenians pulled ahead at about halfway and we just tried to keep pace and bring it home. Our strength is our pace and we fight the whole way down. There’s no point having a grandstand finish like the Germans if you don’t get through."

They must now look to the B final where they will have high hopes of doing what is necessary to qualify for Beijing. The will face USA, the Czech Republic, Belarus and their competition from today Australia and Germany, and all six crews will have the same aim but one crew is guaranteed to miss out.

Folan is looking forward now to their next challenge saying: "It wasn’t our best performance today so we’ll take what we can from it and learn from it and just move on now and focus on the B final and getting our qualification. We’re going out to win it; that’s the way you have to approach it; you can’t go just for a position."

The Irish men’s lightweight four (LM4-) of Paul Griffin, Richard Archibald, Eugene Coakley and Cathal Moynihan will race in the semi-finals tomorrow where the top three finishers will progress to the ‘A’ final and, more importantly on this occasion qualify their boats for next year’s Olympics.

In a difficult season the Irish four have saved their best performances for this regatta by qualifying for the top twelve through the initial heats and quarter-finals and putting themselves within touching distance of Olympic qualification; the top eleven finishers from the A and B finals will secure a place in Beijing.

They face a mighty challenge to advance to the A finals from a semi-final brimming with talent. They face world champions China, the in form British quartet, and heat winners Australia, and Egypt as well as the Italians.

The remaining three Irish boats will all see ‘C’ finals action tomorrow. The women’s lightweight double (LW2x) of Sinéad Jennings and Niamh NiCheilleachair, the heavy single scull (M1x) of Sean Jacob, and the non-Olympic class light single scull (LW1x) of Orlagh Duddy will all be aiming to take the top spot in those C finals (13th overall).

This year the World Championship regatta is of added importance as it is the 2008 Beijing Olympic Qualification regatta. The majority of Olympic qualification places will be on offer in Munich but there will be one further opportunity to qualify for Beijing at the final Olympic qualifying regatta in June 2008.