The Irish men's heavyweight four (M4-) of Alan Martin (NUIG), Sean Casey (Muckross), Cormac Folan (NUIG), and Sean O’Neill (St Michael's) placed sixth in their semi-final of the Rowing World Championships in Munich this morning.
They have progressed to Saturday's B final (places seven to 12) where they will race for Olympic qualification.
The top five of the six crews racing in that B final will qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
As predicted the Dutch and New Zealand crews led out the field establishing a slender lead of just under a second halfway point.
The Irish four were right in the race for third place at that point occupying fifth marginally behind Slovenia and Australian with the Germans holding their fire in sixth.
By the time the crews reached the 1500m mark the Kiwi four had snatched the lead from the Dutch with the fight for third continuing.
The Irish four tried to stay in contact with the Slovenians and the Australians as they pushed on with the Germans charging through on the stand side. As the line approached the Irish had slipped to sixth where they finished.
They must now look to the B final where they will have high hopes of doing what is necessary to qualify for Beijing.
The will face USA, the Czech Republic, Belarus and their competition from today Australia and Germany, and all six crews will have the same aim but one crew is guaranteed to miss out.
This year the World Championship regatta is of added importance as it is the 2008 Beijing Olympic Qualification regatta.
The majority of Olympic qualification places will be on offer in Munich but there will be one further opportunity to qualify for Beijing at the final Olympic qualifying regatta in June 2008.
