ETON DORNEY, ENGLAND – After a horrible performance in their heat Saturday, the Canadian men’s eight rebounded with a solid performance Monday to get into the final Wednesday.
The relief was visible on the faces of many of the team Monday. It might not be too much of a stretch to say they were disgusted with themselves after Saturday, allowing some nerves to throw them off (six of the eight sweepers weren’t in the boat in Beijing).
This is how Conlin McCabe of Brockville, ON, felt about it:
It was a pretty big letdown to go out there and row like that. It was my first race on the Olympic stage and tons of people from back home in Brockville were going to be watching this and it’s the first time they really see what I’ve been doing for the last four years.
They’re getting up at 5 a.m and they’re all excited, ‘we’re going to see Conlin race,’ and then you go out there and do something like that and it was ‘oh, great.’ This is what everybody thinks I do, right?
Let’s reset here and get this back down to basics. Definitely a little bit more happy with today’s performance. That’s going to set us up for the final. Hopefully, we can show everyone what we’re capable of and row our best race. That would be really great.
Canada will be chasing the Germans, along with the USA and everybody else. The Germans haven’t lost since after the Beijing Olympics where Canada won the gold.
Categories: Olympics
