DREAMS DO COME true – Sinead Jennings, from Hawthorn Heights in Letterkenny is into an Olympic final.
In the lightweight women’s double sculls semi-final, 39-year-old Jennings and her partner, Claire Lambe from Dublin, advanced to tomorrow’s final after a phenomenal effort on the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon.
The smile on their faces said it all as Ireland made light of seedings and rankings to make the final after a stop-start week in Rio.
The Dutch crew of Ilse Paulis and Maaike Head won the semi-final in 7 minutes and 13.93 seconds with the Canadian pair Lindsay Jennerich and Patricia Obee second in 7:16.35.
[adrotate group=”81″]Jennings and Lambe were third in 7:18.24, edging out the Danish duo Anne Lolk Thomsen and Juliane Rasmusse to claim a place in the final.
Through the opening 500m, the semi-final had the look of being a four-boat race with Jennings and Lambe inches from the Canadians, who were in third, but having a neat advantage over the Germans.
Jennings, the lightweight women’s singles world champion in 2001, when she topped the pile in Lucerne, was the picture of determination in the stroke seat and by the half-way mark the Irish women were up to third.
[adrotate group=”76″]With every stroke, Jennings and Lambe were showing their worth and they were up to second by the 1,500m marker, defying the seedings with an effort that was 16 years in the making for the Letterkenny woman.
It had been a frustrating sort of a beginning to the Olympic Games for Jennings and Lambe with two days of the rowing action postponed because of the weather conditions in Rio.
Jennings had waited 16 years to go under starter’s orders at an Olympics after missing out on a place at the last three Games – in 2004 and 2008 in rowing and in 2012 when she gave track cycling a go.
[adrotate group=”38″]Last Sunday, high winds affected the buoy system that marked out the course and organisers put the events off until Monday – when Jennings and Lambe cruised through their heat.
They finished in seven minutes and 10.91 seconds, coming in second place, behind the South African’s, Kirsten McCann and Ursula Groble.
They were under little threat from the crews behind them in the heat so it was hard to gauge their performance heading into today’s semi-final, which was also taking place 24 hours later than originally planned.
Yesterday, a combination of wind, rain and mist resulted in FISA, world rowing’s governing body, informing crews that the rowing action was, again, being put back.
From the first semi-final, South African’s Kirsten McCann and Ursula Grobler (7:19.09), world champions Sophie MacKenzie and Julia Edward from New Zealand (7:19.27) and Chinese pair Wenyi Huang and Feihong Pan (7:20.94) advanced to the final.
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