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Seven Canadian boats advance to semifinals at world rowing championships

LINZ, Austria — Seven Canadian teams advanced to the semifinals in Wednesday's action at the world rowing championships.

Maxwell Lattimer of Delta, B.C., and Patrick Keane of Victoria finished third in their lightweight men's double quarterfinal to narrowly advance to Thursday's semifinal. The pair pushed through the 1,500m mark even with the Czech Republic and Denmark, then edged the Danes across the finish line by a half-second.

"Tomorrow is the race we've been training for all year," Lattimer said. "After world championships last year, the main focus was next year's semifinal. It's the big dance. It's what pushes you through all the winter training. We've trained hard enough that we know we just need to go out and do our job."

Jill Moffatt of Bethany, Ont., and Jennifer Casson of Kingston, Ont., finished third in their lightweight women's double quarterfinal to move on to the semifinals. The Canadians finished a comfortable 15 seconds ahead of fourth place finishers from Austria.

"Jenny and I are happy with our race today and it was a good step up from our previous race," Moffatt said. "We do know that there is a cut off for Olympic qualification but if we have our best race, that's all we can do. We are excited to get back out there racing in the semis"

In the final lightweight race of the day, Aaron Lattimer of Delta emptied the tank at the end of the race and rowed past Sean Murphy from Australia and win his quarterfinal.

Meanwhile, Hillary Janssens of Cloverdale, B.C., and Caileigh Filmer of Victoria, sailed through the women's pair quarterfinal winning their race and moving on to Thursday's A/B semifinals.

Conlin McCabe of Brockville, Ont., and Kai Langerfeld of Vancouver crossed the line in second in their men's pair quarterfinal, but the jury called a re-row as a after the umpire launch collided with the Polish boat.

Canada still moved on after the re-row, finishing third behind Italy and Romania. The A/B semifinal was rescheduled to Friday.

Andrea Proske of Langley, B.C., and Gabrielle Smith of Unionville, Ont., won their women's double repechage to advance to the semifinals.

Carling Zeeman of Cambridge, Ont., safely advanced to her A/B women's single semifinal, finishing behind Victoria Thornley from Great Britain.

Loren Pearson of Kamloops, B.C., finished fourth at his first international repechage to progress to the C/D semi-final. With only seven Paralympic quota spots up for grabs in Linz, Canada will aim to qualify this Paralympic boat at the next opportunity in Lucerne, Switzerland in May 2020.

Matt Buie of Duntroon, Ont., and Trevor Jones of Lakefield, Ont., finished just outside A/B semifinal qualification today in fourth, progressing to the C/D semifinal.

The Canadian Press


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