Silver for Canadian women’s eight at World Rowing Championships
Team Canada came through for the silver medal in the women’s eight on the final day of the World Rowing Championships in Sarasota, Florida.
After racing for 2000m, Canada crossed the finish line in 6:07.09, just 0.69 of a second behind the Romanians (6:06.40) who had taken and held the lead from the get-go. New Zealand was less than two-tenths of a second back of the Canadian boat, claiming the bronze in 6:07.27.
You can watch the exciting race here, courtesy World Rowing and Eurovision Sports.
Canada’s women eight team following their second place finish at the 2017 World Rowing Championships in Florida on October 1st. Photo: FISA/Igor Meijer via World Rowing
The Canadian crew of Lisa Roman, Kristin Bauder, Nicole Hare, Hillary Janssens, Christine Roper, Susanne Grainger, Jennifer Martins, Rebecca Zimmerman and coxswain Kristen Kit were running fourth at the 500m mark, two seconds back of Romania and neck-and-neck with the United States, which had been undefeated in this event at the world championships and Olympic Games since 2006.
By the midway mark, the Canadians had moved ahead of the Americans and started closing the gap on the leading boats. Then they really started to surge and with just 500m to go were in third place and closing on New Zealand. In the last couple hundred metres, the nose of the Canadian boat moved in front of the Kiwis.
“We stuck to our race plan and this was an amazing race for us,” Kit told World Rowing after the race. “Normally we have a lot of girls to choose from, but this season we only had eight girls and we just made it work. We are very, very, happy with this result.”
Roman, Roper and Grainger had all been in the eight that finished fifth at Rio 2016. This crew keeps alive a Canadian medal streak at the world championships in the event going back to 2010.
Earlier in the day, Carling Zeeman finished sixth in the women’s single sculls final.
