Team SA suffered a big blow on Saturday’s opening session of the Tokyo Olympics when their fancied men’s four rowers sauntered into last place of their heat.
Lawrence Brittain, Kyle Schoonbee, John Smith and Sandro Torrente, among the country’s top medal hopes, will have to do a spectacular turnaround in the repechage on Sunday or else SA rowing, for the first time this millennium, will fail to reach an A-final at a Games.“We’ve got to regroup tomorrow and try a few things, we’ve got to try execute a different race plan and see how we go,” said Smith, a member of the lightweight four that won gold at London 2012.
On paper they should be able to finish in the top two of the repechage, having beaten four of their five rivals in Lucerne in May. “We just need to go back to that base foundation that we had and see how that goes. We just didn’t row a long enough stroke.” But the trouble was how impotent they looked on Saturday morning. Head coach Roger Barrow wasn’t overly confident that they could get it right in 24 hours.
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