By The Crowd
February 14th 2008 @ 2:46am
Tomkins on top as Olympic rowing trials begin
Olympic great James Tomkins cast aside his recent health scare and revelled in his crew’s strong performance on the first day of the Olympic rowing selection trials at Penrith yesterday.
Tomkins, Sam Conrad, Tom Laurich and James Chapman won the men’s coxless fours in a closely-fought 2000m race with just 2.09 seconds separating the first three boats.
The depth of strength displayed in the men’s squad delighted high performance director and selector Noel Donaldson who said the men’s eight would remain their priority boat.
The fours crews had trained together in recent weeks but, with the eight selection in mind, the rowers will now be rotated from boat to boat over the next two days of racing to look for the fastest overall performers.
Tomkins admitted to being ” very, very nervous beforehand” but “it was great and a pretty cut throat race” as his crew pushed hard from the halfway mark.
Three-time Olympic gold medallist Tomkins is competing after being hospitalised with dizziness and shortness of breath following a session in Canberra nine days ago.
The 42-year-old is seen as a certain selection in the men’s eight so long as his form holds up.
All of today’s other races were preliminary rounds for selection and a clearer picture will be delivered tomorrow when they race their finals.
In the women’s single sculls Queenslander Pippa Savage won her heat by 4.94 seconds but her overall time was nearly nine seconds slower than the other heat winner, Kerry Hore from Tasmania.
Sally Robbins finished fourth in her heat and she will have another chance to impress when she races in the final tomorrow.
Donaldson said not too much could be read into those results.
“Wait and see, the women’s scull final will be more serious,” he said.
The men’s double scull was fiercely contested with all eight boats racing within eight per cent of the anticipated Olympic gold medal time in their two heats.
Brendan Long and David Crawshay won the first heat by just 1.7 seconds from James McRae and Dan Noonan whilst evergreen Craig Jones teamed with Tim Hennessey to win the second heat, their time just over eight seconds slower than the first heat.
Two times world champion Dominic Monypenny from Tasmania won the arms-only single scull in the first-ever Australian Paralympic selection trials.
Rowing will be included in the Paralympics for the first time in Beijing.
Free Email updates:
Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport or that author. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it. We value privacy. More...
